Storage expension card is preventing ubuntu booting?

Community Support
,
1

After I type my password and click log in, it freezes and I have to force shut down, remove the storage card, and log in that way. Otherwise it never boots in.

Why is this happening and how can I solve this issue? I am noob when it comes to linux, so please go easy on technical details.

Thanks!

2

When you say “it freezes”, can you provide a little more detail about what you see immediately after you “click log in”?

Answers to the following questions might reduce the number of back-and-forth follow-up messages. No shame in being a “noob”. We were all there once.

  1. Have you used the command line interface at all?
  2. Are you familiar with how you interact with it?
  3. Are your function keys (the top row) locked or unlocked?
3

Yes I used command panel so I can troubleshoot.

Cursor is frozen. Screen stays blank gray same as log in screen. No buttons on keyboard works. Including functions. The only thing that reacts is the sound of new usb device connected when storage expansion is plugged out or in. No other devices are connected. Expansion cards are : 2x usb c, usb a and storage. This is clean Ubuntu install.

The only solution is to remove expansion card and then shut down by holding power button and boot again. Then it boots fine.

Expansion card is set as exfat / nfts and “bootable” is not clicked.

4

Boot without the storage module connected. Log in and confirm the system is working as you expect.

Open a “terminal window”. I don’t use Ubuntu so I’m not sure how you launch it. Once you have access to a bash prompt, enter the command journalctl -f -k.

Depending on how your system is configured, this may fill the terminal window with a constant stream of kernel log entries, an occasional message or produce no output. If there are a lot of messages being continuously generated we can refine the above command to focus on what’s important for this exercise.

Plug in your expansion card. This should produce a burst of messages in the command window. The ones you’re interested in have the prefixes “usb”, “scsi” and “sd”.

When an expansion card is plugged into my system (running kernel 6.8.0) I see this sequence of messages:

Nov 17 08:49:17 redacted kernel: usb 4-3: new SuperSpeed Plus Gen 2x1 USB device number 34 using xhci_hcd
Nov 17 08:49:17 redacted kernel: usb 4-3: New USB device found, idVendor=13fe, idProduct=6500, bcdDevice= 1.10
Nov 17 08:49:17 redacted kernel: usb 4-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Nov 17 08:49:17 redacted kernel: usb 4-3: Product: USB DISK 3.2
Nov 17 08:49:17 redacted kernel: usb 4-3: Manufacturer:         
Nov 17 08:49:17 redacted kernel: usb 4-3: SerialNumber: 07redacted30
Nov 17 08:49:17 redacted kernel: scsi host1: uas
Nov 17 08:49:17 redacted kernel: scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access              USB DISK 3.2     PMAP PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
Nov 17 08:49:17 redacted kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
Nov 17 08:49:17 redacted kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] 1953525168 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/932 GiB)
Nov 17 08:49:17 redacted kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
Nov 17 08:49:17 redacted kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
Nov 17 08:49:17 redacted kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
Nov 17 08:49:17 redacted kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Preferred minimum I/O size 4096 bytes
Nov 17 08:49:17 redacted kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Optimal transfer size 33553920 bytes not a multiple of preferred minimum block size (4096 bytes)
Nov 17 08:49:17 redacted kernel:  sda: sda1
Nov 17 08:49:17 redacted kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk

I’m hoping that you will see something similar interspersed with some error messages. Just what constitutes an “error” message is hard to nail down. We could start by focusing on what you see that is different to what I pasted above.

NOTE: the important parts of each log entry are to the right of the right-most number that’s followed by a colon or to the right of [sdX] where “X” will be some lowercase letter. Examples of the important bits from the above: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0 and Preferred minimum I/O size 4096 bytes.

You can stop the journalctl command by typing an interrupt (which is normally Ctrl-C).

1 Like
5

do what truffaldino said in a tty so ctrl fn alt f3 or ctrl alt f3 WARNING: font might be really small do this before you login also ctrl shift c and v does not work in this environment do this when you are on the starting page of your login screen lightdm, gdm, and sddm are all login screens they are called display managers.

6

Hi, somebody told me that I should restart battery and it would fix the issue, and indeed it’s fixed.

7

Thanks, but all I had to do was to reset battery and problem was gone.

8

Do you mean you had to fully charge, then fully discharge, then fully recharge the battery?

9

I disconnected battery via BIOS. Another user mentioned this fixed their issue, so I also tried and it worked.

1 Like