Laptop Bricked! Getting the Dreaded: Oh No! Something Has Gone Wrong. Need Help Please

[SuperWookie68]

So I was just minding my own business, hadn't installed or done ANYTHING in hrs to my MacBook Air when the battery gave out and the laptop shut down. This happens all the time with my old MacBook Air as the battery is super old. It lasts 2 or so hrs, then around 40% or so of battery left, can unexpectedly shut down. It's always fine when I boot back up once it's getting some charge. It's even happened before with PoP OS and again, nothing bad happens. Not this time though!

So I boot back up into PoP OS, I log in with my password, then the next screen is all one color with the Oh No! Something Has Gone Wrong message!!! It will only let me restart. I can't even get into the system! I restart and it just keeps going back to this screen! I'm literally locked out of PoP OS!

Now the details and backstory. This is a dual boot machine now. I installed PoP OS on this 2014 MacBook Air a few weeks ago and it's been fantastic! No problems at all. PoP, along with Linux Mint have been the most stable and worry free OS of Linux I've tried so far. So the system has a partition I setup for Mac on one side of the drive and PoP on the other. I had to go through this extremely lengthy install process of making all sorts of partitions on the drive for PoP on this Mac. Followed this guys online tutorial and watched another persons video and it worked amazing! It had me creating a Root, Boot, Home, Swap and Recovery partitions. And I think, one of them had you installing a program called rEFInd. It's a slightly better looking Boot Menu than the std plain gray Mac version. Which to be honest, I'm not even sure how to use. I just hold down option when I boot my MacBook on, select the Linux drive of the two (Mac on the left, Linux on the right) and I'm on my way.

So I'm TOTALLY at a loss as to HOW this happened? How do I fix it? I also didn't want that rEFInd program running anymore on boot up, as I thought it might be the problem? So I went in (after this whole problem happened) to my Mac Utilities, to Startup Disk (and followed the directions on rEFInd's website on how to uninstall). It says it's best to just bypass rEFInd, instead of trying to uninstall it. It's very complicated. So It says to just select the drive you want to boot from, hit restart and voila, it won't boot into rEFInd anymore. Problem is, I think rEFInd had a few different drives or partitions I could boot into for Linux. And I think one of them said Recovery. And that is where I'm guessing I need to go? To PoP OS recovery mode? But I can't get there, because I have a dual boot system. I have to hold down Option key on my MacBook to get to the Boot menu that allows me to choose between the Mac drive or Linux drive. And if I chose Linux and immediately hold down the space bar, nothing happens. It boots into PoP OS then says Oh No! Something has gone wrong. I can't figure out how to fix this and need some help please. Thanks

 

[SuperWookie68]

Also, it has this weird glitch where my Conky theme shows up underneath the On NO screen. Like this:

 

[Alexzee]

The dreaded "Oh no something went wrong" message seems to be linked to the GDM (gnome desktop manage) see here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/1c6dtky/oh_no_something_has_gone_wrong_message_while

This looks like a bug to me and there are known issues with Ubuntu 24.04 (POP OS is based on Ubuntu) here:

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) Release Notes

Noble Numbat Release Notes Table of Contents Introduction New features in 24.04 LTS Known Issues Official flavours More information Introduction These release notes for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) provide an overview of the release and document the known issues with Ubuntu and its...

discourse.ubuntu.com

If you still have the Live USB to Linux Mint or POP OS SuperWookie68 boot into that and run commands to see if those partitions are still there.

I'm not well versed with Mac Books so sorry I won't be much help there.

 

[Egzoset]

I'm not well versed with Mac Books so sorry I won't be much help there.

Same here, but i'd say « Laptop Bricked! » in the title was premature and probably even misleading too. Keep hoping for the best!

 

[SuperWookie68]

The dreaded "Oh no something went wrong" message seems to be linked to the GDM (gnome desktop manage) see here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/1c6dtky/oh_no_something_has_gone_wrong_message_while

This looks like a bug to me and there are known issues with Ubuntu 24.04 (POP OS is based on Ubuntu) here:

Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) Release Notes

Noble Numbat Release Notes Table of Contents Introduction New features in 24.04 LTS Known Issues Official flavours More information Introduction These release notes for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) provide an overview of the release and document the known issues with Ubuntu and its...

discourse.ubuntu.com

If you still have the Live USB to Linux Mint or POP OS SuperWookie68 boot into that and run commands to see if those partitions are still there.

I'm not well versed with Mac Books so sorry I won't be much help there.

So that info seems to be related to doing a System Update? Or something along those lines. I was not doing an update when PoP stopped working. And I don't know what almost any of that info in the Known Issues with Ubuntu 24.04 article mean in relation to my problem. I read through it and only understand a tiny bit of what it's saying. And almost all of it doesn't sound like anything related to my problem. But again, I have no way of knowing, as I don't even know why my PoP stopped working and gave me this Oh No screen.


Ok, so someone on reddit was able to give me some instructions that actually worked! I was able to get to a terminal and create a new user. So now i'm in PoP OS, under the new user. But I don't understand what he wants me to do now. And, again, he's assuming I know 2-5 years+ worth of hardcore deep diving Linux knowledge use to make his instructions work. I don't know what he means. It's like he's giving me a clue in another language. I don't know what he means or how to do what he wants. So I'm just going to post his reply here, so maybe it will help you guys to help me.

So I'm already past the first step of using alt-ctrl-f1 or f2 to get to a terminal. It's actually fn-alt-ctrl-f2 on a Mac apparently. I installed openbox, but have no clue what it even is or why I need it, since he doesn't describe WHY I need it. Or how to use it. But I did get a new user installed and I am in PoP OS now.

use alt-ctrl-f1 through f7 to get to the consoles.

you can also use the boot menu options to boot straight to a shell.

go to the console, add a new user, install a basic WM , for testing purposes.

sudo adduser billgates

sudo apt install openbox

sudo reboot # to reboot

at the login manager screen, try the default session with the new user. try the open box session with both users.

see what works.

likely issue is some config file problem I rhe broken users home. You can use the console, or the openbox session to get to the users home and rename/move the possible broken config files to some backup location and this "reset" the users configs.


Ok, so this is the first part after getting in, that I don't understand. I'm in with the new user in the login manager screen. Check. But I don't know how or why I should be using open box.
Then he mentions all that other stuff, like I know what's going on, how to find them, etc. I don't. I don't know what I'm looking for? Where to find it? Or how to "reset" the users configs? So if anyone knows how to do that, I'd appreciate clarification and more detailed explanation of what I'm doing, where I'm looking and how to do it.


assuming gnome works for the newly made user...

ie:

mv .config .config-backup

there are other config files and directories that may also be moved.

such as .local and so on.

rename them, don't just delete them, you may want to restore parts of them when you get things going.

rename the Dirs, then log out and return the gnome session again.

Again, no idea what ie: mv .config or .config-backup means? What do I do with it? Where do I find it? And any of the rest of this.

Just need help figuring out how to get my PoP OS back up and running. Thanks

 

[SuperWookie68]

Same here, but i'd say « Laptop Bricked! » in the title was premature and probably even misleading too. Keep hoping for the best!

How is that misleading? My computer doesn't work. Isn't that what Bricked means?

 

[SuperWookie68]

Also, here is the terminal screen after I was able to boot into it using fn-alt-ctrl-f2. I ran sudo apt update. Then sudo apt dist-upgrade and this is what was at the end. Not sure if this sheds light on WHY my PoP OS just stopped working all of a sudden or not? But thought I'd share it, just in case it's relevant.

 

[Brickwizard]

Have you tried the obvious, switch on [do you get a grub screen?] if so select pop advanced options find and run repair mode,
or you should have 2 pop options with different Kernels, try booting the older one

 

[SuperWookie68]

Have you tried the obvious, switch on [do you get a grub screen?] if so select pop advanced options find and run repair mode,
or you should have 2 pop options with different Kernels, try booting the older one

If by Grub screen, you mean this?

Then yes, I can boot my MacBook up, hold down Option and get to this screen.

If you mean this screen below:

Then up until a min ago, NO.

But... I just read that if I hold down the space bar while booting into Linux, it should bring this up. And it was INSTANT! I pressed the Enter key and immediately pressed space bar and a screen like this DID come up instantaneously! But I don't see any option to Repair or anything about Advanced. It's just PoP OS old kern and current kern, PoP OS Recover and MacOS. Nothing else.

But I ran PoP OS Recovery mode and it went through a long list of things it's checking I think? It keeps saying Ok in green, Ok in green to the left. Most of the things its running or check say Started, reached, finished, starting just to the left of the thing.

Then near the bottom when it's all done running whatever it is it's doing, it gets to this one thing called Casper-md5check Verify Live ISO checksums. See 'systemctl status casper-md5check.service' for details. And it has a FAILED in red to the left. It then goes to PoP OS DE and wants to install PoP OS? And once PoP OS desktop is up, a pop up box comes on a few times saying: PoP OS is not responding, force quite or wait

So I don't know what any of that means.

And if I boot into Old Kern, it goes to a gray blank screen. I hit the arrow key once, and it goes to some black screen with white terminal looking letters. Says: [ 42.176187] fbcon: Taking over console
[ 42.179889] Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 180x56

/dev/sda4: clean, 265384/5120000 files, 3479376/20479999 blocks
[ 44.623722 logitech-hidpp-device 0003:046D:402C.0005: HID++ 2.o device connected

And then just stays there forever

 

[Brickwizard]

This one, [worded slightly different] open pop OS recovery, you will have more options to choose the one you think is appropriate fix broken packages/ repair installation or whatever

 

[SuperWookie68]

View attachment 22253This one, [worded slightly different] open pop OS recovery, you will have more options to choose the one you think is appropriate fix broken packages/ repair installation or whatever

So that screen is NOT my screen. That's just something I found on the internet to show you. To see if that's the screen you are in fact talking about. My screen only has the following in the order shown:

PoP!_OS (PoP_OS-current kern)
PoP!_OS (PoP_OS-old kern)
Pop!_OS Recovery
MacOS

And again, when I go into Recovery, it does exactly as I stated above.

And I don't now how to "fix broken packages/repair installation or whatever".

I even tried to see if I could follow these instructions on System76's website (https://support.system76.com/articles/pop-recovery/) to Refresh Install PoP. But I can't even get that screen they show to come up! It won't let me do a Refresh Install. Only a Clean Install. I opened a terminal and typed in pop-upgrade recovery upgrade from-release and it comes back with: recovery upgrade aborted: failed to apply system repair before recovery upgrade.

I'm so frustrated and don't know what to do at this point to get my system back? Or should I just do a clean install and lose everything?

 

[Brickwizard]

debian based distributions re usual
sudo dpkg —configure -a
sudo apt update --fix-missing
sudo apt install --fix-broken

 

[ron.alan]

Same here, but i'd say « Laptop Bricked! » in the title was premature and probably even misleading too.

Most times the word "bricked" is used in a computer sense, it's used incorrectly. At least that's what I've noticed.

 

[Alexzee]

@SuperWookie68

Try holding down CTRL + Alt F1 or F@ to get a command line terminal and then run those commands one at a time that Brickwizard posted for you in post #12. Then reboot and see if that fixes it.

IF the configuration is misconfigured in the orginal users home it could take a long time to compare the configuration with the new user that you created to figure out what is broken.

IF you continue to have issues with POP OS I would go for a Linux distro that is not based on Ubuntu.
There is a reason why many of us here do not run Ubuntu anymore.

Linux Mint is Ubuntu made right IMO.

 

[SuperWookie68]

debian based distributions re usual
sudo dpkg —configure -a
sudo apt update --fix-missing
sudo apt install --fix-broken

Ok, so the guy on reddit that helped me get this far said to install open box. Then try to rename the .config file, but don't delete it. So he said open a terminal under my main login in Openbox. Then type in the cli command: mv ~/.config ~/.config_old. He said to then reboot or log out. Then log back into PoP with your main user account and it should be good. It didn't work.

But in Openbox under my own Login: Ryan, OpenBox allows me to right click, open a terminal and type in commands. It's even my customized terminal with my fancy little bash prompt, haha. And in there I typed in those commands you told me to try, one at a time.

When I type in sudo dpkg --configure -a, nothing happens that I can see. It just pops up another bash prompt.

Then when I type in sudo apt update --fix-missing, it runs bunch of code or whatever and at the bottom it shows 3 Letters in Bold and Color. It's underneath Reading Package lists... Done
E: The repository 'https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/menulibre-dev/daily/ubuntu jammy Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.

Then after typing sudo apt install --fix-broken it said the following:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded

I've also typed in sudo apt-get update, sudo apt update, sudo apt upgrade, sudo apt dist-upgrade as well many times under my login and the new user login. Nothing is working. I still am getting the Oh No screen after doing all of this.

 

[KGIII]

Bricked: Broken beyond repair.

 

[Brickwizard]

Bricked: Broken beyond repair.

also bulked

 

[SuperWookie68]

@SuperWookie68

Try holding down CTRL + Alt F1 or F@ to get a command line terminal and then run those commands one at a time that Brickwizard posted for you in post #12. Then reboot and see if that fixes it.

IF the configuration is misconfigured in the orginal users home it could take a long time to compare the configuration with the new user that you created to figure out what is broken.

IF you continue to have issues with POP OS I would go for a Linux distro that is not based on Ubuntu.
There is a reason why many of us here do not run Ubuntu anymore.

Linux Mint is Ubuntu made right IMO.

Haha, so I'm just sh*t out of luck?! Ubuntu just sucks, is super glitchy and there's almost nothing that can be done, short of some Linux wizard going through my laptop configuration? If that's the case, then Man, that is a HUGE bummer!!!

I've spent a TON of time working on and making my PoP OS on my laptop look amazing. It was exactly how I wanted it and looked SOOOO fantastic. Ran smooth. And had ZERO problems until this happened.

And just to be clear.... even though Linux Mint is based off of Ubuntu, you're suggesting I use Linux Mint instead of Ubuntu, PoP OS or Kubuntu? That it should, in theory be WAY more stable and have almost no problems or problems like this? I don't want to do this again and have it all fail all over again. If I chose another distro for the laptop, I want it to be the LAST distro I put on it and have zero problems.

 

[KGIII]

You're blaming Ubuntu for POP's problems. They are not the same OS.

See, the POP! OS is created specifically to work on System76's hardware. It's known to not always play well with other hardware. They don't care if it doesn't work well on other hardware. It's not meant for other hardware but they make it available for you to download and use at your own risk.

 

[Alexzee]

Ok, so the guy on reddit that helped me get this far said to install open box. Then try to rename the .config file, but don't delete it. So he said open a terminal under my main login in Openbox. Then type in the cli command: mv ~/.config ~/.config_old. He said to then reboot or log out. Then log back into PoP with your main user account and it should be good. It didn't work.

But in Openbox under my own Login: Ryan, OpenBox allows me to right click, open a terminal and type in commands. It's even my customized terminal with my fancy little bash prompt, haha. And in there I typed in those commands you told me to try, one at a time.

When I type in sudo dpkg --configure -a, nothing happens that I can see. It just pops up another bash prompt.

Then when I type in sudo apt update --fix-missing, it runs bunch of code or whatever and at the bottom it shows 3 Letters in Bold and Color. It's underneath Reading Package lists... Done
E: The repository 'https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/menulibre-dev/daily/ubuntu jammy Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.

Then after typing sudo apt install --fix-broken it said the following:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded

I've also typed in sudo apt-get update, sudo apt update, sudo apt upgrade, sudo apt dist-upgrade as well many times under my login and the new user login. Nothing is working. I still am getting the Oh No screen after doing all of this.

Here is your problem:

E: The repository 'https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/menulibre-dev/daily/ubuntu jammy Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.

The repository that you are trying to pull from doesn't have a release file.
In other words Ryan....it can't pull what it doesn't have.

It's not secure. Having said that, I wouldn't trust it.

You're getting into deep waters on trying to fix the misconfigured configuration of the original user that the guy from Reddit is trying to walk you through.

It would be easier to use Linux Mint to get your Mac up and running. Then, you can make choices that are less upsetting and not above your skill set.

After doing the above, you'll have an os and you can take your time looking for something that's going to be right for you. Not an os for the James Webb Telescope <or> something engineered for a international space station. Let's go simple and safe for now.

Are you up for that?