There's a problem I've found with xorg/x11... I'm getting a frozen screen: the mouse still moves, the cpu is clearly working hard, but no response on the screen.
I think this happened after upgrading my linux kernel to 5.4.0-65-generic.
Accoring to here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/Freeze
One of the bits of advice is to go back to an earlier kernel. But I don't have any older kernels installed.
I'd like to install an earlier kernel alongside this one, and I've been doing a lot of googling, but there's not a lot of consistency in the answers and most of them are from many years ago...
My question is: What is the best current method to try to go back a few kernels?
(Alternatively, I'm thinking of trying 20.10 to see if that solves the problem.)
Edit: as requested, I'm adding the output of ls -l /boot to the queston:
total 236572
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1501359 Feb 16 2018 abi-4.13.0-36-generic
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1501359 Mar 7 2018 abi-4.13.0-37-generic
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 213212 Feb 16 2018 config-4.13.0-36-generic
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 213212 Mar 7 2018 config-4.13.0-37-generic
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 237764 Jan 15 02:50 config-5.4.0-64-generic
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 237764 Jan 18 09:31 config-5.4.0-65-generic
drwx------ 4 root root 4096 Dec 31 1969 efi
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Jan 29 10:22 grub
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Jan 28 06:55 initrd.img -> initrd.img-5.4.0-65-generic
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 42967898 Jan 31 12:27 initrd.img-4.13.0-36-generic
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 22544867 Jan 31 12:27 initrd.img-4.13.0-37-generic
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 50035195 Jan 31 12:27 initrd.img-5.4.0-64-generic
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 50042544 Jan 31 12:27 initrd.img-5.4.0-65-generic
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Jan 28 06:55 initrd.img.old -> initrd.img-5.4.0-64-generic
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 182704 Aug 18 04:46 memtest86+.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 184380 Aug 18 04:46 memtest86+.elf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 184884 Aug 18 04:46 memtest86+_multiboot.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2860 Feb 16 2018 retpoline-4.13.0-36-generic
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2860 Mar 7 2018 retpoline-4.13.0-37-generic
-rw------- 1 root root 3880918 Feb 16 2018 System.map-4.13.0-36-generic
-rw------- 1 root root 3880918 Mar 7 2018 System.map-4.13.0-37-generic
-rw------- 1 root root 4746296 Jan 15 02:50 System.map-5.4.0-64-generic
-rw------- 1 root root 4746296 Jan 18 09:31 System.map-5.4.0-65-generic
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 Jan 28 06:55 vmlinuz -> vmlinuz-5.4.0-65-generic
-rw------- 1 root root 7870224 Feb 16 2018 vmlinuz-4.13.0-36-generic
-rw------- 1 root root 7872152 Feb 22 2018 vmlinuz-4.13.0-36-generic.efi.signed
-rw------- 1 root root 7870224 Mar 7 2018 vmlinuz-4.13.0-37-generic
-rw------- 1 root root 7872152 Mar 18 2018 vmlinuz-4.13.0-37-generic.efi.signed
-rw------- 1 root root 11686656 Jan 15 02:56 vmlinuz-5.4.0-64-generic
-rw------- 1 root root 11686656 Jan 18 09:45 vmlinuz-5.4.0-65-generic
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 Jan 28 06:55 vmlinuz.old -> vmlinuz-5.4.0-64-generic
I also had similar freezing issues after upgrading to 5.4.0-65 from 5.4.0-64, and had to revert back to the earlier kernel.
In many cases, simply pressing Esc and/or Shift after the BIOS/UEFI splash logo would get you access to the grub menu, where you can then choose to boot into an older version of kernel. Judging by the output of
ls -l /boot
, you seem to have 5.4.0-64 still available on your machine.If that doesn't get you the grub menu, then you might need to edit the grub timeout style and duration. See the answers in this post for more details.
Assuming you tried 5.4.0-64 and it works, then if you want grub to use the last choice by default, so that you don't have to press Esc and/or Shift to get the grub menu every time, you can use the following grub options (e.g. modify
/etc/default/grub
and thensudo update-grub
):It is also possible to specify the actual default kernel entry that grub should use, albeit it's slightly more sophisticated. See the answers of this post for details.
In case you want to increase the number of old kernels that the system keeps in the future, it's also possible. See this post for details.