Unable to boot LenovoThinkpad W541

[manadi]

I tried to boot my Lenovo Thinkpad W541 using a bootable USB(having Ubuntu 14.04 image).

I could see the welcome screen where I can choose to try or install Ubuntu. Choosing either one causes a freeze.

Initial boot screen shows the following error (which maybe the reason?):

"mmc0 unknown controller version(3), You may experience problems"

I cannot run "apport-collect" since this problem stops me from booting.
---
ApportVersion: 2.12.5-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC1: ubuntu 2803 F.... pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/controlC0: ubuntu 2803 F.... pulseaudio
CasperVersion: 1.336ubuntu1
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 13.10 "Saucy Salamander" - Release amd64 (20131016.1)
MachineType: LENOVO 20EGS01600
MarkForUpload: True
Package: linux (not installed)
ProcFB: 0 inteldrmfb
ProcKernelCmdLine: file=/cdrom/preseed/username.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash -- maybe-ubiquity
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.11.0-12.19-generic 3.11.3
RelatedPackageVersions:
 linux-restricted-modules-3.11.0-12-generic N/A
 linux-backports-modules-3.11.0-12-generic N/A
 linux-firmware 1.116
Tags: saucy
Uname: Linux 3.11.0-12-generic x86_64
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: adm cdrom dip lpadmin plugdev sambashare sudo
dmi.bios.date: 02/26/2015
dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.bios.version: GNET72WW (2.20 )
dmi.board.asset.tag: Not Available
dmi.board.name: 20EGS01600
dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.board.version: Not Defined
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.chassis.version: Not Available
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvrGNET72WW(2.20):bd02/26/2015:svnLENOVO:pn20EGS01600:pvrThinkPadW541:rvnLENOVO:rn20EGS01600:rvrNotDefined:cvnLENOVO:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
dmi.product.name: 20EGS01600
dmi.product.version: ThinkPad W541
dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug is missing log files that will aid in diagnosing the problem. From a terminal window please run:

apport-collect 1437386

and then change the status of the bug to 'Confirmed'.

If, due to the nature of the issue you have encountered, you are unable to run this command, please add a comment stating that fact and change the bug status to 'Confirmed'.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.

[manadi (reachanadi)]

I cannot run "apport-collect" since this problem stops me from booting.

[Joseph Salisbury (jsalisbury)]

Can you see if this issue also happens with the latest Vivid image? It can be downloaded from:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/

[manadi (reachanadi)]

Yes, the same problem occurs with the vivid image.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

manadi, if you turn off secure boot/UEFI, are you then able to boot?

If not, could you please provide the missing information following https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingKernelBoot ?

[manadi (reachanadi)]

Yes, UEFI is turned off since the beginning.

I tried what it says in the link you gave, although there was no vt.handoff option (in vivid image). I didn't get to initram shell. A lot of blurb went by quickly and stuck at one point, which was:

Starting Wait for Plymouth Boot Screen to quit...

Before that all (that I could see) messages said OK except one:

Failed to start Commit a transient machine-id on disk.

HTH, will update if there is anything else.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

manadi, are you using the i386 or amd64 image?

[manadi (reachanadi)]

vivid i386

[penalvch (penalvch)]

manadi, could you please test amd64 and advise to the results? Just to advise, in future tests, please test amd64, not i386.

[manadi (reachanadi)]

I tried with amd64 14.04 image this time. Did ctrl-alt-fn-fn1 to see the console while the machine is hung. Following messages might be if interest:

INFO: rcu_sched detected stalls on CPUs/tasks: {} (detected by 0, t=15049 jiffies, g= 1107, c=1106, q=0)
INFO: Stall ended before state dump start
BUG: soft lockup - CPU#2 stuck for 23s! [khubd:74] --MANY OF THESE
.
.
.
INFO: task "something" blocked for more than 120 seconds. --MANY OF THESE

This keeps going on with fan at full speed.

It seems though that another user was able to boot and install. Please see link below.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2271060

[manadi (reachanadi)]

Also tried ArchLinux, similar messages there too, seems like a kernel bug.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

manadi, please test the amd64 variant of http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ .

[manadi (reachanadi)]

I did, there are similar messages, only in this case along with call traces. Attaching a screenshot.

[manadi (reachanadi)]

13.10 boots fine.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

manadi, could you please boot into 13.10, and then execute the following in a terminal:
apport-collect 1437386

[manadi (reachanadi)]

apport information

[manadi (reachanadi)]

apport information

[manadi (reachanadi)]

apport information

[manadi (reachanadi)]

apport information

[manadi (reachanadi)]

apport information

[manadi (reachanadi)]

apport information

[manadi (reachanadi)]

apport information

[manadi (reachanadi)]

apport information

[manadi (reachanadi)]

apport information

[manadi (reachanadi)]

apport information

[manadi (reachanadi)]

apport information

[manadi (reachanadi)]

apport information

[manadi (reachanadi)]

apport information

[manadi (reachanadi)]

apport information

[manadi (reachanadi)]

apport information

[manadi (reachanadi)]

apport information

[manadi (reachanadi)]

Bios updated to 2.21. Following is the output of the command:

GNET73WW(2.21)
03.12.2015

The system still hangs with following messages :

task blocked for more than 120 seconds
rcu_sched detected stalls on CPUs/tasks
Tainted: G W 3.16.0-30-generic #40~14.04.1-Ubuntu

[penalvch (penalvch)]

manadi, could you please test the latest upstream kernel available from the very top line at the top of the page (the release names are irrelevant for testing, and please do not test the daily folder) following https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds ? It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue.

If the test did not allow you to test to the issue (ex. you couldn't boot into the OS) please make a comment in your report about this, and continue to test the next most recent kernel version until you can test to the issue. Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please comment on which kernel version specifically you tested. If this bug is fixed in the mainline kernel, please add the following tags by clicking on the yellow circle with a black pencil icon, next to the word Tags, located at the bottom of the report description:
kernel-fixed-upstream
kernel-fixed-upstream-3.XY-rcZ

Where XY and Z are numbers corresponding to the kernel version.

If the mainline kernel does not fix this bug, please add the following tags:
kernel-bug-exists-upstream
kernel-bug-exists-upstream-3.XY-rcZ

Once testing of the upstream kernel is complete, please mark this bug's Status as Confirmed. Please let us know your results.

Thank you for your understanding.

[Salvatore Giudice (toregiudice)]

It took me a week to get Debian Wheezy to run properly on a W541. I'll give a list of the nexesary items. Many of which should be applicable to Ubuntu. Firts of all, don't expetc to be able to boot this from a live usb any time soon. The W541 is way too new. If you wish to install, then there is hope for a working system.

1. You should disable the virtualization vt-d option in the bios
2. Bios 2.21 is unnecessary. It only provides some mitigation for the rowhammer vulnerability.
3. Booting: try the following grub command line options: nomodeset and acpi=off

nomodeset was necessary because the W541 will hang on boot until the nouveau driver is blacklisted

4. Go into recovery mode on an installed systemand blacklist the nouveau driver. Should be somethign along the lines of adding the following to /etc/modprobe.d/nouveau.conf:

blacklist nouveau
options nouveau modeset=0

At this point, you should be able to boot. However, your trackpad and nvidia graphics are not going to work at this point. The synaptics driver also won't honor the bios setting to disable the touchpad portion of the device.

5. Trackpad: use psmouse imps protocol and don't use the synaptics driver. W541 trackpad is not supported as of this post by synaptics

create/edit /etc/modprobe.d/psmouse.conf and isert the following line:

options psmouse proto=imps

After a reboot, the trackpad, touch stick, and buttons will magically start functioning properly. You just won't have the useless fancy gestures synaptics normally provides for the type of users who actually thought Windows 8 was a good product.

6. Graphics: Now this is where the horror begins. I strongly suggest you take a disk image with clonezilla at this point. It is extremely likely that you will blow up your system in spectacular ways several times before you get graphics to a workable state. So plan on reimaging a few times.

The plan of attack is to install bumblebee, nvidia refererence drivers, remove xserver-xorg-video-intel, enable multiarch, install primus and primus-lib:i386, and customize the bumblebee driver configuration to use:

# Driver=nvidia
# KernelDriver=nvidia-current

After all this, you'll need to compile intel mesa from source and install it over the mesa drivers that were installed via package manager. Yes. You read that right.

Finally for GPU switching to work, you'll need to modify /etc/default/grub:
-GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
+GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi=\"!Windows 2013\""

And then update-grub and reboot

I wish you the bets of luck. I spent a week on this 8 hours/day to work out all the issues for our company laptops since we run Debian Wheezy here. Hopefully the above helps you get Ubuntu running properly. However, if this is a personal mahcine. I strongly suggest that you avoid it at all costs. Sell it on ebay or return it to lenovo and buy a model that has been around for at least a year. The W541 just isn't worth the headache. I know some users that chose instead to get a W540 and swap out the trackpad with the part from the W541 to get usable buttons. If you go that route you will save yourself alot of headache.

[Arno Esser (arno-esser)]

Salvatore, thank you very much for that post!!!

After a week of much trouble trying to install several linux distros I was now successfull installing Ubuntu 15.04 on my brand new W541 with a very simple approach:

I first start the live system with the boot parameter "nomodeset". In the live system I could then install ubuntu without any further hacks and the install system seems to run very good.

The boot parameter acpi=off seems to be not good choice for ubuntu, because it disables the keyboard.

[Tony (tony-alpha1)]

I also have a w541 and I experienced the exact issue listed here when trying to install the latest Ubuntu 14.04 LTS or Kubuntu 14.04 LTS. My w541 has Core i7 4810HQ with 32GB or RAM + 240G SSD. After much research, I ended doing exactly one Arno Esser listed. Seems to be the only option at this time. I wanted to use LTS to avoid having to upgrade later, but I have no choice....looks like I have to use 15.04. I hope this gets address for the LTS too!

[Henri Rebecq (henri-rebecq-research)]

I have a w541 and encountered exactly the same problem when trying to install Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (both with USB and DVD live versions).
I managed to get 15.04 working using a DVD and the same method as Arno Esser.

I hope that this problem will be addressed soon!

[mezzbest (tobias9876)]

[Short Version]
*bump*

[Long Version]
I have successfully installed the Ubuntu *Server* 14.04.2 LTS version using the DVD (after many unsuccessful tries with other DVDs). Subsequently, I was able to install 'ubuntu-gnome-desktop' and 'nvidia-current' w/o any major issues. I will provide further details on request. The main point of this post is that the Ubuntu *Server* 14.04.2 LTS iso seems to be an acceptable work around if one wants the LTS and not 15.04. Alternatively, it is an easy way to get a running system for testing this issue (besides others(?)) of 14.04 on the Lenovo W541 (with 32GB RAM, 256GB SDD, and the K2100M nvidia card).

[penalvch (penalvch)]

mezzbest / Henri Rebecq / Tony / Arno Esser /Salvatore Giudice:

It will help immensely if you filed a new report via a terminal:
ubuntu-bug linux

Please feel free to subscribe me to it.

[mezzbest (tobias9876)]

Christopher:

I still owe the filing of a bug via 'ubuntu-bug linux'. However, there seem to be at least two possilbly related other bugs:
1) the blacking out of the screen while starting the live cd: *patience* seems the "solution" at this moment in time (as detailed below);
2) a system crash shutting down from the live cd;
3) system freeze when trying to detect screens via System Settings > Displays > Detect Displays.

For the present bug, i.e. booting with the 14.04.02 amd64 LTS image (from February 18 (?)), I could observe the following (written here mainly for the sake of owners of a Lenovo w541). After booting with the live cd 14.04.2 LTS amd64 and choosing to try ubuntu, the screen shows ubuntu and the four dots in red and white progressing, then, later, the screen goes blank, then the mouse coursor appears, the screen goes blank again, and finally the system is up and running and one can go through the installation process (which I've completed successfully twice). manadi, Arno or Salvatore, can you confirm?

[Lucas Rakasz (lrakasz)]

Just a quick question.
Is ubuntu as a distro doing anything to fix this bug in next usb install release ??

[tomzalt (tlazaro18)]

Same problem here on Lenovo W540. I basically can't install Ubuntu or Kubuntu on my laptop. I can't have Linux. This is horrible. Are you telling me I have to live with a laptop with Windows 8? What kind of sick person would that to another human being?

Please help. Let me know if there is any way I can help debug or test this. 14.04, 14.10 and 15.04 Ubuntu and Kubuntu all fail.

[mezzbest (tobias9876)]

Hi,

as I wrote somewhere up the thread, you can try to install the server
version (say of the LTS) and then add whatever else you need -- I suppose
this is the best shot and relatively easy. BIOS settings are possibly of
relevance as well (as mentioned in another post up the thread). Good luck!

cheers,
Tobias

On 7 August 2015 at 03:03, tomzalt <email address hidden> wrote:

> Same problem here on Lenovo W540. I basically can't install Ubuntu or
> Kubuntu on my laptop. I can't have Linux. This is horrible. Are you
> telling me I have to live with a laptop with Windows 8? What kind of
> sick person would that to another human being?
>
> Please help. Let me know if there is any way I can help debug or test
> this. 14.04, 14.10 and 15.04 Ubuntu and Kubuntu all fail.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to the bug
> report.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1437386
>
> Title:
> Unable to boot LenovoThinkpad W541
>
> Status in linux package in Ubuntu:
> Incomplete
>
> Bug description:
> I tried to boot my Lenovo Thinkpad W541 using a bootable USB(having
> Ubuntu 14.04 image).
>
> I could see the welcome screen where I can choose to try or install
> Ubuntu. Choosing either one causes a freeze.
>
> Initial boot screen shows the following error (which maybe the
> reason?):
>
> "mmc0 unknown controller version(3), You may experience problems"
>
> I cannot run "apport-collect" since this problem stops me from booting.
> ---
> ApportVersion: 2.12.5-0ubuntu2
> Architecture: amd64
> AudioDevicesInUse:
> USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
> /dev/snd/controlC1: ubuntu 2803 F.... pulseaudio
> /dev/snd/controlC0: ubuntu 2803 F.... pulseaudio
> CasperVersion: 1.336ubuntu1
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
> LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 13.10 "Saucy Salamander" - Release amd64
> (20131016.1)
> MachineType: LENOVO 20EGS01600
> MarkForUpload: True
> Package: linux (not installed)
> ProcFB: 0 inteldrmfb
> ProcKernelCmdLine: file=/cdrom/preseed/username.seed boot=casper
> initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash -- maybe-ubiquity
> ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.11.0-12.19-generic 3.11.3
> RelatedPackageVersions:
> linux-restricted-modules-3.11.0-12-generic N/A
> linux-backports-modules-3.11.0-12-generic N/A
> linux-firmware 1.116
> Tags: saucy
> Uname: Linux 3.11.0-12-generic x86_64
> UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
> UserGroups: adm cdrom dip lpadmin plugdev sambashare sudo
> dmi.bios.date: 02/26/2015
> dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
> dmi.bios.version: GNET72WW (2.20 )
> dmi.board.asset.tag: Not Available
> dmi.board.name: 20EGS01600
> dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
> dmi.board.version: Not Defined
> dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information
> dmi.chassis.type: 10
> dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
> dmi.chassis.version: Not Available
> dmi.modalias:
> dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvrGNET72WW(2.20):bd02/26/2015:svnLENOVO:pn20EGS01600:pvrThinkPadW541:rvnLENOVO:rn20EGS01600:rvrNotDefined:cvnLENOVO:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
> dmi.product.name: 20EGS01600
> dmi.product.version: ThinkPad W541
> dmi.sys.vendor: ...

[tomzalt (tlazaro18)]

Hi Tobias,

Thanks for your reply!

I tried Ubuntu Server 14.04.3 LTS but it didn't work for a different reason. I got "Failed to load COM32 file gfxboot.c32" and the provided solution didn't work (https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/259869). That has happened to me before for some Kubuntu release on another laptop and I was able to work it out, not this time though.

In the end I managed to install Kubuntu 14.04.1 without trouble from USB stick (like all my attempts). Notice that Kubuntu 14.04.2 failed. That should be the case for Ubuntu too so I would recommend people to try that out as the simplest solution.

Cheers,
Tomás

[Dusty (dusty-jewett)]

I have a W541 that booted successfully with Ubuntu 15.04. Is there anything I can do to help those having trouble on this thread? (I didn't do anything manual, just using the defaults.)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Hippie Hacker (hippiehacker)]

Trying a couple approaches here myself. I saw that this expired after 60 days (without resolution). Bump.

[Hippie Hacker (hippiehacker)]

This bug went from Incomplete to Expired, and I'm wanting to get it fixed. :)

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Hippie Hacker, while "bumping" a bug report doesn't provide any value to either an Incomplete or Expired report, what will is if you filed a new report via a terminal:
ubuntu-bug linux

Please feel free to subscribe me to it.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Carlos Avila (capepo)]

I got to install Ubuntu 14.04 in a W541. If you need me to collect some info from my computer, let me know how and I'll post it here. I set to legacy only in the bios, disabled virtualization, installed and ran an update. It's working now

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Carlos Avila, it will help immensely if you filed a new report with the Ubuntu repository kernel (not mainline/upstream) via a terminal:
ubuntu-bug linux

Please feel free to subscribe me to it.

For more on why this is helpful, please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.