Kernels 3.10.6 and 3.10.7 fail to boot with EFI stub

Question

Been using rEFInd for some time now. Current installed version is 0.7.1. Kernels 3.10.5 and earlier would boot without incident. Yesterday I upgraded to 3.10.6 and boot failed. As a workaround, I copied the Liquorix kernel and initramfs from my Kubuntu partition; to my mild surprise, this worked. My next test was to install the 3.10.7 Zen kernel from heftig's repository. This kernel boots fine (I added a version number string to the name of the kernel image and the initramfs so that rEFInd would automatically match them). After that, I enabled Arch testing and updated the Arch kernel to 3.10.7; this also fails to boot just like the 3.10.6 kernel did.
I'm a fan of boot text, so I've configured rEFInd in text mode only. Here's my refind.conf, with almost no changes from defaults:
timeout 20
textonly 1
use_graphics_for
scan_all_linux_kernels
And my /boot/refind_linux.conf:
"Boot to X" "ro root=/dev/sda3 nox2apic nmi_watchdog=0 elevator=noop acpi_osi=Linux pcie_aspm=force raid=noautodetect systemd.unit=graphical.target"
"Boot to single user" "ro root=/dev/sda3 nox2apic nmi_watchdog=0 elevator=noop acpi_osi=Linux pcie_aspm=force raid=noautodetect systemd.unit=multi-user.target"
# "Boot to recovery" "ro root=/dev/sda3 nox2apic nomodeset systemd.unit=rescue.target"
Finally, details abot my laptop -- a ThinkPad T520:
steve@t520 ~ $ inxi -xxSMCGDp
System: Host: t520 Kernel: 3.10.7-1-zen x86_64 (64 bit, gcc: 4.8.1)
Desktop: KDE 4.11.00 (Qt 4.8.5) dm: kdm Distro: Arch Linux
Machine: System: LENOVO product: 423926U version: ThinkPad T520 Chassis: type: 10
Mobo: LENOVO model: 423926U Bios: LENOVO version: 8AET63WW (1.43 ) date: 05/08/2013
CPU: Dual core Intel Core i7-2620M CPU (-HT-MCP-) cache: 4096 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 10769.3
Clock Speeds: 1: 1188.00 MHz 2: 1809.00 MHz 3: 1809.00 MHz 4: 1080.00 MHz
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA GF119M [Quadro NVS 4200M] bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:1057
X.Org: 1.14.2 driver: nvidia Resolution: [email protected]
GLX Renderer: NVS 4200M/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.3.0 NVIDIA 325.15 Direct Rendering: Yes
Drives: HDD Total Size: 1256.3GB (8.2% used)
1: id: /dev/sda model: M4 size: 256.1GB serial: 000000001140031E608A temp: 0C
2: id: /dev/sdb model: HGST_HTS721010A9 size: 1000.2GB serial: JG40006PG61HKC temp: 43C
Partition: ID: / size: 108G used: 37G (37%) fs: ext4
ID: /boot/efi size: 511M used: 3.1M (1%) fs: vfat
ID: /mnt/kubuntu size: 118G used: 59G (53%) fs: ext4
ID: swap-1 size: 9.64GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap
Last edited by steveriley (2013-08-19 05:27:15)

Answer 1

Steve, your picture is far too large for these forums.  You are going to want to put it in some kind of a picture sharing/hosting site and link back to it.  Otherwise it will end up disappeared (likely via black magic) from your post.  I don't think that it provides any useful information anyway.  If you want to post your kernel command line that is great.  But posting a picture of a frozen screen with no output... doesn't really do much good.
Efistub has been a bit shaky since 3.6 actually.  There is a monster thread about this already, the title of which references 3.6, but the content continues on through several kernel releases.  Still people continually report this as being an issue.  What I do is I keep a normal efi bootloader (one that doesn't rely on efistub) at the ready all the time.  My choice was elilo, but since [testing] started including syslinux-efi in the syslinxu package, I have started using that... though I still have elilo set up.
Can you boot with efistub from the UEFI Shell or gummiboot?  I prefer gummiboot, but I have had this problem in the past, and when I did, I was able to boot with rEFInd... which was strange.  Some people even report that simply having a direct efibootmgr entry in their firmware causes it to magically work.  Though there should be to reasonable explanation for this, it was confirmed by several people in the mentioned thread.