Mageia forum

The latest Mga9 kernel (kernel-6.6.14-desktop-2), while running on an older laptop (and my Cauldron machine), has caused problems on my i7-1051U laptop, running slow, leaving the touchpad less responsive, and generally making life impossible. The prior kernel functioned perfectly, and I wanted to switch to that, but the "Advanced options" on the grub menu is not working. When I selected, a terminal window opens asking for a username and password (before login???), which does nothing.

I have looked at the config files and they seem fine (showing 3 kernels available). I have since run both grub-mkconfig and grub2-reinstall to no avail. I still cannot access the earlier kernels from grub and am not sure what more to do.

You could try with the classical iso. It has a rescue choice when booting. You can reinstall grub. Maybe the reinstall script works a little differently in rescue mode.

There are a few issues in your post.

slow - what does that mean in particular?
touchpad less responsive - could easily be changed by adapting the touchpad option during runtime, no need to boot a different kernel
In advanced options or when pressing "e" to edit any menu option requires the password setup during installation of the bootloader, see the first screenshot here: https://doc.mageia.org/installer/9/en/c ... oader.html
If you entered a password there, this has been configured for grub and you would need to enter it again.
You could also boot normally and remove the password from grub configuration. It's contained in /boot/grub2/user.cfg - see e.g. https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=13011

Thank you for the simple solution (via link) to delete the user.cfg file. This is the first install I have done on "virgin" metal in a few years, so did not realize that the installer was using my password to protect me from myself. That is likely a good idea for editing the boot file, but for booting into other kernels?!? Even allowing for someone a) getting my machine and b) knowing an exploit in an earlier kernel, that is too much IMHO.

In any event the user config file has been renamed, and I have booted back into the 6.5.13 kernel.

As far as a kernel issue or not, it is clearly a kernel problem, perhaps why there is another build of the 6.6.14 kernel in backports testing. Given that there is another build of the kernel being tested, I will not file a bug report.

My description was not the best, but there are clear indications of a problem with the kernel. One, the strange loading of the tomboy-ng notes splash window. Two, the touchpad is not only less responsive, it becomes impossible to move the pointer at times. Three, with nothing other than the notes application and conky running, the CPUs pop up to about 25-30% at times (perhaps even a loop on one core as I forgot to edit my conky to capture all cores on the i7) --compared to 0-2% with the 6.5.13 kernel.

In any event, thank you for pointing me to the grub solution. Will mark this as solved.

Oh the backport testing 6.6.14 should have been cleaned...

There is a 6.6.16-4 in core updates_testing

If you have dkms-anbox installed, uninstall it.

May have been mistaken on the repository. Looking forward to testing the new kernel.

I should have noted that I saw the thread on anbox and, no, it was not installed. There is some other problem with the kernel. Ironic that it works OK on my old hardware, but not on the newer hardware...

Please don't forget to mark the thread as solved, by editing the subject of the first post and prefix it with [SOLVED], thanks in advance.