.:Slackel - Hellenic Linux Distribution::.

I also think it is a grub problem or also a kernel problem or laptop's problem. The kernel is from 2016 and grub from 2017 if you did not make any upgrade. It is an old system. I also don't touch what it is working. So leave it as it is, since it is working fine. Just shutdown and boot again.

I have a HP G62 2GB RAM laptop which suddenly years ago had a vga chipset motherboard problem which is not solved. It is HP hardware problem. When i boot i see nothing. No grub menu. Even if disk is formatted with no OS installed nothing appeared on screen. So i could not install windows or slackel from old only installation disks. So i remember i booted with slackel live and after a while when system boot lines appeared on screen. So i installed slackel and laptop was useful again.
I just turn on the laptop and wait until boot starts and log in to slackel openbox desktop. Other than that laptop has no problem.

I just noticed something interesting. With system running as usual, I plug the Live USB and I don't mount it. Then I try to reboot. The idea behind this is to bypass grub and see what happens on reboot. In BIOS I set up the USB as first priority in boot sequence, so presumably with a bootable USB plugged in the system doesn't even look at hard disk to boot, since USB has higher priority.
And then, to my surprise, Slackel Live takes WAY longer than usual to boot. Stages that are normally passed in milliseconds take several seconds each. At some point I thought the system freezed (it was that slow). It took more then 4 minutes to load Slackel Live, which is much more that what it does if I do a cold boot. I assume that the problem is not related to Slackel or grub, since like I said it reboots from USB, so I guess hard disk (therefore, grub too) is not used at all in reboot. I am not sure if Slackel Live uses grub to boot, though.

Then I tried to boot Window$ (one of the very rare times I do that), then reboot from Window$ to Slackel. This worked without a problem. Now, I know for a fact that rebooting is not the same as cold boot in Window$ 10, but in older versions restarting the system was pretty much an automated shutdown then boot. Since this netbook has Window$ XP (the "latest" version of that crappy operating system it can run), this is probably the case. It works only because the system doesn't really reboot... in reality it shuts down momentarily then boots again. But the problem appears while rebooting only.

Based on all the above I tend to believe this is actually a hardware issue, although I'm not sure why malfunctioning hardware can do a cold boot without any problem but hangs on reboot. If Slackel Live USB doesn't use grub then the problem is definitely not related to grub.

Slackel live usb not use grub to boot. It uses elilo and efi or syslinux. Pressing alt+F12 on my lenovo laptop i have two options to boot from slackellive64 usb, usb+efi or usb (syslinux). In first option elilo menu appeared and in second option the syslinux menu with languages to pick up. In slackellive32 bit only the second option appeared the syslinux menu.

What if you set first priority to boot the slackel partition in bios.

In my lenovo if i boot with usb then on reboot, boot priority goes to windows and system boot on windows 10, Slackel disappeared from bios menus. This is why i have also ubuntu installed which appeared as an option in menus and boot in slackel using ubuntu and reinstall grub. This happens always when i boot with usb to make tests on slackel usb development and it is a damn problem with lenovo laptops. It has to do with bios and firmware which i am not going to touch and destroy laptop. Of course it is not a big problem since takes 1-2 minutes to boot and reinstall grub.

djemos wrote:Slackel live usb not use grub to boot. It uses elilo and efi or syslinux.

Then the problem has nothing to do with my grub. It can't be, because rebooting from Slackel to Slackel Live doesn't use hard disk's MBR, therefore doesn't use grub at all. So, for some reason, and all of a sudden, this computer decided that it hates being rebooted, and only likes shutdown then cold boot. In the past it didn't have that problem though.
However, I am still wondering why I cannot update-grub normally, and I have to do it by booting via Live USB and set up chroot environment. Not that I will need to update-grub often (if at all). I am just wondering out of curiosity.

At any rate, I am going to mark this thread as "solved" because the problem doesn't seem to be related to Slackel. Given the evidence, it looks much more like a hardware problem to me, and in any case it appears even when my Slackel hard disk installation is not used at all, when I boot from USB.

Last but not least, I apologize for mentioning Window$ in this thread. It is by far the worst operating system ever made, and it's getting even worse over the years and new versions. I usually don't use bad words at forums, so I promise the term "Window$" is not going to be mentioned again from me.

Windows 10 do not really shutdown if you use the option shutdown from windows 10 menus. And from slackel i cannot create folders in windows 10 partition.
And installing grub caused problems sometimes.
So when i boot on windows 10 i use a script i named shutdown to really shutdown windows 10. And from slackel i can create folders and everything.
So maybe in your laptop this is the reason grub-update fails. Maybe.
I also hate windows 10 and i don't use them. I just have windows 10 to help friends when have problems so i can examine the problems they have.

djemos wrote:I also hate windows 10 and i don't use them. I just have them to help friends when have problems so can examine the problems they have.

If they use Window$ (any version, but even worse if it's Window$ 10), they will have problems and keep you busy. Always. Constantly. Non-stop. Forever.

Well some of them changed to slackel or ubuntu. But all are friends so i have to help them.