Kali won't boot following "apt upgrade" from kernel 4.15.0

Hi,

I have a Dell Inspiron 15 5577 laptop (i7-7700hq, GTX-1050m, 8gb, 128GB SSD, 1TB HDD) dual-booting with Win10, Kali and ubuntu.

The existing kali installation was a clean install from a live USB. (i think the current version, in any event it had kernel 4.15.0).
I initially had some problems getting that booting: boot-time messages came up including:

Code:

---

tpm_crb MSFT0101:00: [Firmware bug]: ACPI region does not cover the entire command/response buffer. [mem 0xfed40000-0xfed4087f flags 0x200] vs fed40080 f80
tpm_crb MSFT0101:00: [Firmware bug]: ACPI region does not cover the entire command/response buffer. [mem 0xfed40000-0xfed4087f flags 0x200] vs fed40080 f80
platform regulatory.0: firmware: failed to load regulatory.db (-2)
firmware_class: see https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware for information about missing firmware
dell_smbios: No dell-smbios drivers are loaded
dell_smbios: No dell-smbios drivers are loaded

---

But then I found that adding 'nomodeset' to the boot parameters would allow kali to boot, so saw no need to troubleshoot further.

A Few days ago, i did 'apt update' then 'apt fill-upgrade', which installed / upgraded over 1200 packages.

After that upgrade, I could not boot (either into the new 4.17.0 kernel, or to the previous 4.15.0 kernel.). only the 'recovery mode' options will work.

If i try to boot into the old (4.15.0) multiuser environment i get the same error messages, If i try the new kernel (with no nodes), i just get:

Code:

---

tpm_crb MSFT0101:00: [Firmware bug]: ACPI region does not cover the entire command/response buffer. [mem 0xfed40000-0xfed4087f flags 0x200] vs fed40080 f80
tpm_crb MSFT0101:00: [Firmware bug]: ACPI region does not cover the entire command/response buffer. [mem 0xfed40000-0xfed4087f flags 0x200] vs fed40080 f80

---

In both cases, the machine freezes at this point.


I have tried re-installing from the live usb, and the doing 'apt update' and 'apt upgrade' (rather than a full-updrade) but the result is the same.

Where do I start fixing this?

This has to do with the Nvidia drivers, I had to go through all of this with my laptop, similar set up, i7-7700hq gtx1070, and mine would either hand on boot or get to the login screen and login to a black screen and nothing else, I had to boot with nouveau.modeset=0 and then it would load fine, however at some point in there you need to install the Debian repo packages so you can install the official Nvidia drivers because there's some issue with it, I'll try to look back into this as it's been a few months, I only had to do it once and it was flawless after that so I can't remember exactly but the Kali instructions on how to install the official Nvidia drivers are for desktops, they don't translate over well to laptops, there are some other posts out there of people working around this and I used a combination of a few posts getting mine to work with trial and error till I had a solid setup that didn't return errors in terminal, but like I said it was months ago and I only ended up doing it once so I can't remember the exact commands.

I know it involves installl Nvidia official driver, disabling nouveau, something to do with changing xorg config, and allocating the default gpu to the nvidia card, and then it's all good, except at one point you need to reboot the computer, and it'll boot into a black screen and you need to use command line to log back in, and from there is where you edit xorg config and finish the rest of the install so having your phone handy for a list of commands if ideal.

Hope you get it working, I know this wasn't much help but hopefully it gives you some direction for where to look for answers

EDIT:
I was just re-reading your post about having nomodeset for the boot parameters, I'm not 100% on this but I did find that unless you have the official Nvidia drivers installed, the GPU never actually runs and you're always using onboard graphics, it never switches dynamically, so by using the nomodeset parameter it's just disabling the dedicated gpu and using on board graphics in xorg config.

I could be wrong, but when I was doing this same thing while testing the nvidia drivers, I noticed that any time I tried to run commands that would recognize the gpu, it would never come up as active, 3d modes would never be enabled.

I'll try to look into this further when I'm home from work and I'll try to piece together my bread crumbs from how I got it working since we both have 10 series gtx's in our laptops

Oh, and you can also just try to add nouveau.modeset=0 to the boot parameters instead of nomodeset, this should also get you up and running back into your desktop so you can get the official nvidia drivers installed and set up.

Thanks, bANONYMOUS. nouveau.modeset=0 got me going again.

Now to play with the nvidia drivers....

I found this post which worked for me.