Anyone having troubles with GRUB full disk decryption sometimes not decrypting?

Anyone having troubles with GRUB full disk decryption sometimes not decrypting?

[Christopher Lemmer Webber]

It's well known that GRUB's full disk decryption stuff sometimes takes a
long time, so I'm not particularly concerned with that.

The problem I have been having though, and it seems to be with increased
frequency, is that it frequently seems to freeze before booting.

I can type in my passphrase, after about 10 seconds of waiting it will
say "Slot 0 unlocked."  Usually if things are ok, it goes to the Grub
menu screen and then it will boot from there... if I make it past the
Grub menu, everything is (mostly) fine.

Unfortunately, I have to sometimes try up to 30 times before it will
boot, because it either freezes at:
 - right after "Slot 0 unlocked"
 - right after the menu selection on the Grub menu is made, before
   booting into the OS proper.

I am guessing nobody else is having this problem since nobody else has
mentioned it, but I thought I'd ask.  I suspect it's a hardware issue (I
am also starting to experience freezes once booted as much as once a
day), though memtest86 says things are fine, and the Purism forums seem
to indicate that nobody else is having this particular issue.  (Aside
from this nontrivial issue, which my suspicion is not common on these
machines, my experience with the LibreM has been very good.)

But, before I ship my laptop in, figure I'd check...!
 - Chris

Re: Anyone having troubles with GRUB full disk decryption sometimes not decrypting?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> skribis:

> The problem I have been having though, and it seems to be with increased
> frequency, is that it frequently seems to freeze before booting.
>
> I can type in my passphrase, after about 10 seconds of waiting it will
> say "Slot 0 unlocked."  Usually if things are ok, it goes to the Grub
> menu screen and then it will boot from there... if I make it past the
> Grub menu, everything is (mostly) fine.
>
> Unfortunately, I have to sometimes try up to 30 times before it will
> boot, because it either freezes at:
>  - right after "Slot 0 unlocked"
>  - right after the menu selection on the Grub menu is made, before
>    booting into the OS proper.

Woow.  FWIW I’ve never experienced that on my UEFI/x86_64 laptop in the
last couple of years.

If you do find out more, I’d be curious to learn what it was!

Ludo’.

Re: Anyone having troubles with GRUB full disk decryption sometimes not decrypting?

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> writes:

> Unfortunately, I have to sometimes try up to 30 times before it will
> boot, because it either freezes at:
>  - right after "Slot 0 unlocked"
>  - right after the menu selection on the Grub menu is made, before
>    booting into the OS proper.

I have not observed this on my laptop (Librem 13).

-- 
Ricardo

Re: Anyone having troubles with GRUB full disk decryption sometimes not decrypting?

[Mike Gerwitz]

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On Sat, Sep 22, 2018 at 10:27:14 -0400, Christopher Lemmer Webber wrote:
> Unfortunately, I have to sometimes try up to 30 times before it will
> boot, because it either freezes at:
>  - right after "Slot 0 unlocked"
>  - right after the menu selection on the Grub menu is made, before
>    booting into the OS proper.

I don't have this problem with my X200.  Did you use full disk
encryption with your X200?

> But, before I ship my laptop in, figure I'd check...!

Please let us know what you find.  I'm sorry to hear you're having
such a severe issue.

-- 
Mike Gerwitz

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Re: Anyone having troubles with GRUB full disk decryption sometimes not decrypting?

[Christopher Lemmer Webber]

Ludovic Courtès writes:

> Hello,
>
> Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> skribis:
>
>> The problem I have been having though, and it seems to be with increased
>> frequency, is that it frequently seems to freeze before booting.
>>
>> I can type in my passphrase, after about 10 seconds of waiting it will
>> say "Slot 0 unlocked."  Usually if things are ok, it goes to the Grub
>> menu screen and then it will boot from there... if I make it past the
>> Grub menu, everything is (mostly) fine.
>>
>> Unfortunately, I have to sometimes try up to 30 times before it will
>> boot, because it either freezes at:
>>  - right after "Slot 0 unlocked"
>>  - right after the menu selection on the Grub menu is made, before
>>    booting into the OS proper.
>
> Woow.  FWIW I’ve never experienced that on my UEFI/x86_64 laptop in the
> last couple of years.
>
> If you do find out more, I’d be curious to learn what it was!
>
> Ludo’.

My suspicion is something hard drive related.  (FWIW this isn't the
original hard drive that came with the laptop, I upgraded it.)

I'll try replacing that and see if I get better results... otherwise I
guess I'll hand it back into repairs.

Re: Anyone having troubles with GRUB full disk decryption sometimes not decrypting?

[Christopher Lemmer Webber]

Ricardo Wurmus writes:

> Christopher Lemmer Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> writes:
>
>> Unfortunately, I have to sometimes try up to 30 times before it will
>> boot, because it either freezes at:
>>  - right after "Slot 0 unlocked"
>>  - right after the menu selection on the Grub menu is made, before
>>    booting into the OS proper.
>
> I have not observed this on my laptop (Librem 13).

Yeah, so I think I have some kind of hardware fluke... my guess is the
hard drive (which I had upgraded).  Thanks for confirming that someone
else with roughly the same machine isn't experiencing this kind of weird
thing.