[Bug 1883785] Re: intermittent boot failure dell inspiron 3593

[Sandy Patterson]

@ppedemon Well, I'm the OP so WORKAROUND 2 does work for me (obviously).
I deployed these laptops with it after testing that it was stable so I
don't have access to them anymore. I did look into the git history of
grub and it seems to be related to some patches around TPM where it
fails to perform some sort of tracing if the tpm chip isn't happy. This
happens regardless of whether you've installed using secure boot or not.
Anyway, It wasn't happening for me on 18.

I had a forum posting here
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2445531 where oldfred got me
on the right track. I tried to include all the information in this bug
report though.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1883785

Title:
  intermittent boot failure dell inspiron 3593

Status in grub2 package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Sometimes on reboots and quick cold boots (poweroff then hit power
  immediately) I get

  ```
  error: Command failed. -repeated a number of times then
  error: you need to load the kernel first.

  Press any key to continue...
  ```

  * cold booting usually fixes this and I'm able to boot normally.
  * I have three identical laptops and have seen the issue on 2 (i've only installed 20.04 on two).
  * I don't see the problem on 18.04.
  * If I go into the grub> menu many commands fail "true" "cat" but some don't "ls" "false."
  * Once i'm in grub> menu I can fix things by running "rmmod tpm" then subsequent commands start working again and I can exit and continue.

  The source for grub points to tpm.c when I search for "Command
  failed." I also notice that there's no such file in 2.02 version of
  grub so maybe that's related to why it doesn't work.

  I haven't been able to find a combination of BIOS settings that
  mitigates this. I have tried disabling everything I could think of.

  This laptop has Intel PTT which I think is baked into the BIOS (which
  I upgraded to the newest).

  WORKAROUND 1:
  * Once the system fails to boot:
  * enter grub> by pressing 'c'
  * type 'rmmod tmp'
  * press 'esc' to go back to menu and select desired option and system boots again.

  WORKAROUND 2:
  sudo cp /etc/grub.d/40_custom /etc/grub.d/06_notpm
  sudo bash -c 'echo "rmmod tpm" >> /etc/grub.d/06_notpm'
  sudo update-grub

  I will have these laptops for some time but won't be able to test much
  beyond a week or two most likely.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
  Package: grub2-common 2.04-1ubuntu26
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-37.41-generic 5.4.41
  Uname: Linux 5.4.0-37-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.2
  Architecture: amd64
  CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
  CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
  Date: Tue Jun 16 16:33:42 2020
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-06-08 (8 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Release amd64 (20200423)
  ProcEnviron:
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: grub2
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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