How do I investigate boot failures after installing Fedora 24/25?
I recently installed ‘Fedora (4.5.5-300.fc24.x86_64) 24 (Workstation Edition)’ on my elderly host and it works well. I have installed two later Fedora offerings, neither of which will boot. They are Fedora (4.8.6-201.fc24.x86_64) 24 (Workstation Edition) Fedora (4.8.10-300.fc25.x86_64) 25 (Workstation Edition)
The three versions are visible in the grub boot menu, so I imagine that they are completely independent.
As the failing versions do not boot, I am wondering if I can access the logs from my working installation.
My host is nearly 10 years old, and I wonder if it's simply too old to run modern software. However, I don't know what would allow it to run one version of Fedora 24, then fail to run a later one, or Fedora 25.
I posted this as a comment in the Fedora magazine, but no-one has responded. Is this a better place to raise queries?
Welcome to ask.fedora. What you have isn't three versions of Fedora, you have Fedora 25 with two backup kernels (which is normal) which just happen to be from Fedora 24. Try booting again from the F 25 kernel, and if it fails, boot from the working one. Then, in a terminal run this:
sudo journalctl -b=-1and edit your question to include any lines you think are important. (You only get one answer per question, so don't waste it on adding more info.)Without knowing the "error messages" you receive (or what actually happens) while booting the "one of the newer fedora24/25 kernels" we probably can't help with the problems specific to booting those kernels. The likelihood that a kernel "shipped" with fedora25 is "too new" for your hardware when you are capable and currently running a kernel "shipped" with fedora24 is very near zero. And even if it is "above zero" for some reason, booting an "old f24 kernel" and using "new f25 gnu/other binaries" should be possible (and is likely what you are actually currently doing)