update from 18.04lts to 20.04lts freezes during boot

[ShadYoung]

I am not sure about 20.04, but 21.10, and 22.04 both require an EFI partition or the system might not boot properly. If you are upgrading from a scheme that did not have one, your culprit may lay there.

If it is happening during an upgrade, then I might suggest doing a clean install right to 22.04. If you have a decently fast thumbnail drive, you can do a test install directly to the thumbnail and avoid contaminating the existing setup. If it fails there, I would look to your hardware. Update bios and device firmware - older Samsung SSDs have had a couple of firmware revisions over the years that you would not know about using Linux as it only updates it in Windows. Something might be conflicting or something might be dying. Unplug all devices that are not strictly necessary and try with a minimal setup.

[Scorpa54]

I am not sure about 20.04, but 21.10, and 22.04 both require an EFI partition or the system might not boot properly. If you are upgrading from a scheme that did not have one, your culprit may lay there.

If it is happening during an upgrade, then I might suggest doing a clean install right to 22.04. If you have a decently fast thumbnail drive, you can do a test install directly to the thumbnail and avoid contaminating the existing setup. If it fails there, I would look to your hardware. Update bios and device firmware - older Samsung SSDs have had a couple of firmware revisions over the years that you would not know about using Linux as it only updates it in Windows. Something might be conflicting or something might be dying. Unplug all devices that are not strictly necessary and try with a minimal setup.

I was able to upgrade in Virtualbox within the same system. I am figuring that Nvidia might be the culprit as I did not install those drivers in Virtualbox. I shall try without those drivers in the near future when I have time to restore if that doesn't work.

[claydoh]

......

Any relevant hardware specs? Nvidia anything

some info would be potentially useful.
it could be as simple as the driver ve5suon no longer being supported in newer kernels, or it coukd be that the card coukd no linger be supported by the non-free drivers.

uninstalling them before might be useful.
Or we could be chasing fireflies.

OR there might be an already known and simple way to fix the upgrade or something.....

[Scorpa54]

some info would be potentially useful.
it could be as simple as the driver ve5suon no longer being supported in newer kernels, or it coukd be that the card coukd no linger be supported by the non-free drivers.

uninstalling them before might be useful.
Or we could be chasing fireflies.

OR there might be an already known and simple way to fix the upgrade or something.....

This is what I found

[ShadYoung]

I use the 5.15 on an older GTX 970... it should be appropriate for your much newer 1660 too.

[Scorpa54]

I use the 5.15 on an older GTX 970... it should be appropriate for your much newer 1660 too.

I am noticing a nouveau selection in the list. Is that what I would select to disable Nvidia for an upgrade, if Nvidia might be the culprit?

[ShadYoung]

I am noticing a nouveau selection in the list. Is that what I would select to disable Nvidia for an upgrade, if Nvidia might be the culprit?

Yes. You might want to do a clean install, and do not select the "install 3rd party drivers" box. It should default to Nouveau. I find switching to nuveau after install to be problematic. I am doubtful its the graphics driver though. The 1660 is built on a well established architecture and does not do anything "fancy" like RTX. Its a GTX which is stable and well supported. If you are using an Intel CPU, I would simply take the GPU out (or disable it in the bios) and use the IGP to see if the discrete GPU is actually the culprit.

[Scorpa54]

You might want to do a clean install

I prefer not to do a fresh install if I can help it, too many programs with customized hot keys and then there is remembering to find like things like email files to backup.

[ShadYoung]

I prefer not to do a fresh install if I can help it, too many programs with customized hot keys and then there is remembering to find like things like email files to backup.

Do you have a spare thumbnail drive with at least 64gig memory? You can install on that without risking your existing system and trouble shoot there, then apply the fix back to the installed system. I always test on an old 120gb SSD in a 10 dollar USB 3 enclosure from Amazon.

[Scorpa54]

Success!!! Well sort of. I removed Nvidia Xserver and did the upgrade with no booting hitches, but Balloo is now reporting unexpected closures. Perhaps these will go away when I upgrade to Jammy which I will do before re-installing Nvidia