I am very new to using Linux, but I want to become more knowledgeable because I don’t like Windows’ politics. I came here from Lunduke’s podcasts.
I have an old HP Pavillion Notebook Laptop that I am trying to get OM to install and work on. The specs of the laptop are as follows:
4 x AMD A8-7410 APU with AMD Raedon R5 Graphics
6.7 GiB of RAM
AMD Raedon R5 Graphics
I am trying to install and run the following version of OM (this is what it tells me when I load the live image):
“You are using Open Mandriva Lx 24.12 (ROME) Rolling with Kernel 6.12.1 desktop”
I flashed a thumb drive with that ISO of OM about two weeks ago using Balena Etcher. I have flashed it onto a different laptop, but I am not playing with that one because the battery won’t charge. I have been playing with the laptop (specs above) because it was an old one my mom had but didn’t use anymore. I think she bought it around 2014 or so.
I was able to start the live image and install what I thought was just fine. I did notice that there was an error, “EFI Stub: error: unable to allocate memory for event log”. I didn’t know what this meant, and I was able to keep installing and using, so I just moved forward. I tinkered around on the laptop every other day or so for a few minutes and it ran just fine. I could surf the web and use a few applications. Today, however, I installed some updates which required me to restart. Once I restarted, It would not boot up properly.
What that looks like now is as follows:
I turn the laptop off
I turn the laptop on. About 3-5 seconds after hitting power on, it shows the OM screen asking for how I want to boot. I either let it time out for regular boot, or press enter to regular boot. I don’t really know what I’m doing to pick any of the other options.
It then says what linux kernel version I’m running (6.12) then, a few seconds later, displays that error again, “EFI Stub: error: unable to allocate memory for event log”.
It then either goes to a blank screen, or sometimes to a blank screen with a vertical blinking pipe.
This is the same process even if I repeat turning the laptop off and on.
I just put the flash drive in again to load the live image. When I did that, I get that same error again even with the live image.
Is there something wrong with the flash? Is there something bad about the laptop? I don’t recall this being an issue with the first laptop I tried, but I really don’t remember.
I appreciate your help! I am happy to provide more details if needed.
-Garrett
You want the option that has (console mode) at the end of the line. See if that boots. If it does you will see prompt to login. Type your user name and password and press enter to login.
If that all works we will first try installing a newer kernel, to do that type sudo dnf up kernel-desktop, you will be asked for root or administrator password. Enter that and press enter to upgrade your kernel. When the kernel upgrade is complete type reboot and press enter to reboot. Let’s hope this works.
Explanation:sudo gives user administrator or root privileges for tasks that require admin privileges, dnf is the package manager OMLx uses, up is an abbreviation for upgrade and kernel-desktop tells dnf to upgrade to the most recent kernel-desktop for ROME. The kernel install will take a little bit of time.
I have another possibility that may work if that does not. Also we can ask OM developers for a solution if we need to.
I retried it with this command. It did about the same thing as it did last time. It only took a few seconds to roll through checking for updates. It ended with the same result. When I tried to load the normal OM launcher, it is now on a blank screen with a blinky horizontal line. I apologize, I think I should have said it was a blinky horizontal line before.
Also, EFI Stub makes me think that if the battery is run down, each time it comes back up default, the TPM is on. I don’t know if it has one, but check to see and turn it off if it exists.
I changed the time in the BIOS, by saving and exiting. I then asked it to boot OM as normal, and it did present that same error message. It is now on a blank screen with a horizontal blinky line. I should note that it is consistently displaying the OM background screen in between showing the error message in the corner and going to the blank screens.
I confirmed several times that the BIOS time is my local time now by restarting the computer.
TPM is trusted platform module, correct? How do I check if it has one/turn it off? Is that just done my searching of this model of laptop on the internet?
Certainly not annoying me! I just want the thing to work.
I can confirm secure boot is off. I just checked, but I think I also had to do that to switch to Linux from Windows.
I also found the TPM and turned it from “Enable” to “Disable”.
It is still presenting that error message. It then went to a blank screen.
I restarted then checked the BIOS again. TPM was still disabled, but the time had reverted back to 5hrs ahead. I changed it to my local time and booted again. Same result as before.
After a couple more reboots, the time is proper and TPM is disabled. Same results.
I will try that, but I notice that when I press F9, tell it to boot from USB, then select the option to boot the live image, it then gives the same error there as well.
