[SOLVED] Mint 18.2 and 18.3 64bit cinnamon lockups

Originally Posted by Thane I'm afraid the grub menu doesn't show up on reboots. I have tried holding down the shift key after Post and also rapidly tapping the shift key. Neither seems to have any effect.

Ok. Some people have reported more success with the Esc key, some with the right shift key (bizarrely).

But let's do it the other way around:

Enter the following command into the terminal:

gksudo xed /etc/default/grub

and (i) put a # before GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0

(ii) set GRUB_TIMEOUT to a reasonable number of seconds (I use 10 because I don't belong to the "It must boot instantly" school).

Then close xed, saving the file when requested, and run (to configure grub with the new settings):

sudo update-grub

After this has completed, restart your machine and hopefully the grub screen will show.

Got it thanks. Grub menu came up on next reboot after using the xed method. Definitely running on the 4.13.0-31-generic kernel now. Will see if this fixes the problem.

Originally Posted by Thane Got it thanks. Grub menu came up on next reboot after using the xed method. Definitely running on the 4.13.0-31-generic kernel now. Will see if this fixes the problem.

Great. Give it a few days.

At the moment, due to Spectre and Meltdown, kernel updates are coming thick and fast, and the rush to fix those vulnerabilities (if possible) is causing occasional regressions in those updated kernels. It may be that in the end you can skip 4.13.0-32 and that 4.13.0-33 will have corrected any regression and will work well with your hardware. We'll just have to see how it pans out.

Thanks so much! Will report back in a few days with feedback. cheers

Your idea of utilizing the previous 4.13.0-31 kernel rather than what was the newer 4.13.0-32 kernel, appears to have done the trick over the last 6 days hydrurga. A number of reboots and no reoccurances of lockups. Over the first 4 days I didn't install any other updates, so as not to cloud the issue. For the last two days my desktop machine has been running continually with firefox, google chrome, thunderbird, libre office writer running and also win 10 running in virtualbox (just to give Mint a good chance to crash.) Also over the last two days all Win 10 updates have been installed and all non-kernal recommended updates for Mint 18.3 64bit. Fingers crossed, but it looks like the problem may have been solved again. Thank you.

Great to hear, Thane. Hopefully it is indeed a regression in the kernel that will be sorted in a future version.

Now over a week and not one incidence of a lockup. Still using the 4.13.0-31 kernel. Looks good. Thanks again.

I know no-one's responded to this in over 6 months, but that may be because the title is a bit misleading. It's not solved, and shouldn't be listed as such. I thought the thread would offer a solution, and have done much of what's been suggested, but, like the original poster, i can't get the afflicted computer (running Mint 19.3; and it's not mine, it's a friend's machine for which I am sysadmin)to stop locking up, and usually, when it locks up, it locks up so badly it requires a system reboot. If I can't find a solution, I think I'm just going to try a different Linux flavour for my friend's machine, as soon as the COVID-19 virus restrictions are lifted somewhat in my neck of the woods (literally; I live in a city on the edge of a vast rain-forest). Cheers JWeintraub.

I see jweintraub's post states, that this issue is not solved. Actually it was solved for me as far as I was concerned, way back at my last posting. I have had no (zero) recurrances, since using hydrurga's suggestion of reverting to a former kernel at the time. I suspect a later kernel fixed the problem.