Install Rocky Liniux on a Lenovo E550 Notebook

Rocky Linux General
1

I installed Rocky Linux 8.5 on a Lenovo E550 Notebook. The install process works fine. The first error message was ACPI-Error. I fixed this error with the following workaround.

vi /etc/default/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="crashkernel=auto resume=/dev/mapper/rl_robiie-swap rd.lvm.lv=rl_robiie/root rd.lvm.lv=rl_robiie/swap rhgb quiet acpi=off"
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="false"

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub.cfg

After a few hours, the mouse and screen freeze. I am not sure if I have the right graphic driver installed. How can I check if I have the right driver installed? Here is a screen shot.

Lenovo-E550

2

Hi @Joerg

when you say

The first error message was ACPI-Error.

what do you mean exactly? When/where did that message appear?

On a side-note:
In general, nowadays, and also with contemporary hardware, it shouldn’t be necessary to tweak/fiddle Linux with regards to ACPI. You could probably check the BIOS settings of the machine instead or check if there is a firmware (BIOS) update available at Lenovo for the E550 in case there are known issues with ACPI support.

Regarding the driver question:
Since it’s an Intel HD, the MESA drivers that come with Rocky (out-of-the-box) should be fine. I’m not aware of anything “better”, certainly not for Intel chipsets. Wrong graphics drivers usually refuse to load, fail immediately (or when changing resolution etc.) or give clear signs of something going wrong - but not freeze only after a couple of hours.

With regards to the freeze:
I have seen this happening for quite some reasons and none of the was a “wrong driver”, but quite often simply a “problematic” gnome extension or side-effects of a mix of extensions. And sometimes even just “software” in general.

What happens if you install Rocky without any additional software/gnome extensions - will it freeze then? And does the system really freeze or just the graphic session? When screen and mouse freeze, hit ctrl + alt + F3 to switch session to a command-line. If that works, it’s certainly a GUI (gnome) or software problem. If not, it indeed could be related to something under the hood, like hardware.
BTW: To switch back to GUI session, use ctrl + alt + F1

Very final thought:
There’s always a risk of data corruption in the process of downloading/writing the install image (ISO), so it may be worth checking the CRCs of the image - just to be on the safe side.

Hope this helps, Thomas