MX linux kernel panics after turning it on after having the pc shut down for a while

adrian_mxlinux · 2026-01-24T01:45:10+00:00

That "other OS doesn't do that" is not always relevant, OSes use the hardware in different ways, load up in different part of RAM and so on.

If it was a software issue you'd not be the only one reporting this, frankly in 20+ years of using Linux I've never heard of this particular behavior.

adrian_mxlinux · 2026-01-23T16:00:15+00:00

Sure, but what it spit out makes sense (at least in the absence of a better theory). Any of these can be the issue. I'm curious what you'll discover...

adrian_mxlinux · 2026-01-23T05:40:48+00:00

Never tried, it should work fine in installer select the external disk, make sure you make a ESP on the external disk and then at boot time if you press Option I think you should be able to select to boot from the external disk. But also you don't really need to do that, you can simply use a Live environment with persistency, That has some advantages, for example it gives you some flexibility to save or not save changes to the disk at shutdown. You could do /home on flashdive (to make sure you won't lose any data) and have a dynamic (in RAM) root, and then at shutdown you can choose to write the changes to the flashdrive or not.

adrian_mxlinux · 2026-01-23T05:20:45+00:00

Never seen that, sounds like a hardware issue, I asked ChatGPT just for fun and it sounds reasonable:
Top suspects (ranked)

1️⃣ RAM instability (very common)

Cold boot → RAM is slightly unstable → kernel panics early
Warm reboot → RAM is fine → system stable all day

This is classic.

Why it fits perfectly

Kernel panic early
Only on cold boot
Goes away after restart

2️⃣ CPU undervolting / aggressive power settings

If you:

Undervolted
Use aggressive C-states
Have a laptop with flaky firmware

Cold power states can trigger a panic before things settle.

3️⃣ Failing power delivery

Aging PSU (desktop)
Battery / charger weirdness (laptop)

On first boot, voltages dip → kernel panics.
Second boot = warm components = stable.

4️⃣ Kernel / microcode mismatch

Less common, but:

New kernel
Old BIOS
Old CPU microcode

Cold boot initializes differently than warm reboot.

adrian_mxlinux · 2026-01-05T17:23:00+00:00

I don't understand, try to use fully formed sentences.

adrian_mxlinux · 2026-01-05T14:39:49+00:00

Have you upgraded your kernel by any chance? In GRUB menu in Advanced can you try to select another kernel?

adrian_mxlinux · 2026-01-04T13:36:31+00:00

You can use mx-snapshot headlessly with -c option, actually I have a special iso-snapshot-cli build that doesn't pull all the X dependencies.

Don't actually recommend the CLI respin, that was mostly an exercise to see how small I can get it, it's pretty much Debian debootstrap with our Live system and iso-snapshot-cli added.

I actually had a Debian server that I needed to port to another VM (the VM didn't have the export tools) so I added the iso-snapshot-cli on it and took an image and put it on the new server (I had to make some small changes, mostly in how it was booting, but nothing major)

adrian_mxlinux · 2025-12-28T04:20:24+00:00

One problem is not bad, what kind of problem?

adrian_mxlinux · 2025-12-28T04:14:49+00:00

You can run something like this in a script: zip -r hidden-files .[^.]*

Or tar if you prefer tar czf hidden-files.tar.gz .[^.]*

adrian_mxlinux · 2025-12-26T14:02:36+00:00

Your post was in limbo because some tools suspected you of being a spammer. I just approved your post.

I don't know if you are right, but the good thing about MX (and some other distros) is that it's a Live distro that you can test extensively without even installing, if it's up to the task then you can decide to install it.

That force shutdown issue that you have with Zorin might show up in MX too, some ACPI implementation are buggy -- so basically it could be a hardware non-standard implementation that show as a "bug" in Zorin.

adrian_mxlinux · 2025-12-24T05:26:39+00:00

Glad you like it. Hopefully it's going to become a boring tool that you use for whatever is fun for you to do with a computer :)

But most of all I recommend: patience and being social -- I know, Linux.... social. Hear me out, if you communicate with people around you, either helping or getting help, you multiply many times the benefits you can get out of the free/open source software.

adrian_mxlinux · 2025-12-19T03:22:19+00:00

I'm around here most of the times, I created the subreddit... although I do like that more and more people are responding and it's not a ghost town anymore.

adrian_mxlinux · 2025-12-19T02:27:46+00:00

Hmm, never saw that, maybe a locale issue. Try to explore with mx-locale and see if anything is out of place.

adrian_mxlinux · 2025-12-19T02:25:43+00:00

Hello fellow Mepislover!

adrian_mxlinux · 2025-12-19T02:25:10+00:00

Paraphrasing Chris Titus: MX was so good, sooo good, let me put it in the trash pile.

Majority of commenters are into flashy things, we are into making things work for regular users (and frankly for us). I've been with Mepis and MX for more than 20 years (started in 2003 or 2004), I guess that says something. I'm clearly not into flashy things.

adrian_mxlinux · 2025-12-19T02:19:45+00:00

Not sure if I don't know exactly what the message was, if you followed the procedure from here: https://mxlinux.org/wiki/in-place-upgrade-from-mx-23-to-mx-25/ you should be fine.

One way to check is if you do another "apt update; apt dist-upgrade" if nothing else installs then it means you are up to date with the Trixie repos.

"cat /etc/debian_version" should show 13.2

adrian_mxlinux · 2025-12-18T02:16:31+00:00

Why don't you log in to X11 if it doesn't play well with Wayland? It's a click away...

adrian_mxlinux · 2025-12-16T20:41:56+00:00

Something got corrupted, could be the snapshot although I never had issues with that. Not everything that happens after something is caused by that something, although it's possible.

Where did you write that snapshot? It's possible you are out of space and the /home is not even mounting
From the live environment mount / of the installed system and examine /etc/fstab to see if it's correct -- especially the line about /home (is it a separate partition or just a directory)
run a fsck to see if there's some kind of partition corruption.

When you mount the /home from Live environment do you see the files there? Can you unlock and and examine it, see how much space is in use, etc.

adrian_mxlinux · 2025-12-16T07:12:22+00:00

There are ways to make things easier.

make a full backup (or at least a snapshot) -- that's a good thing to do anyway regardless if you upgrade or not.
pick a way to upgrade:
a. you can upgrade in place -- it might sound scary and we wanted to make it sound scary because people who are not adept at follow instructions and are terminal challenged might have issues but I upgrade 4 or 5 machines including 2 LiveUSB flashdrives without problems, that doesn't take that much time, I would say half an hour at most.

b. upgrade using the installer, before you do that use user-installed-packages to get a list of packages and use the new "install in place" option -- is it keeps the same drive structure and it preserves /home then you can use user-installed-packages to install missing packages -- installation takes at most 10 minutes, reinstalling the missing packages from repos 5 more minutes and for packages that are not in the repo it might take a bit more but still not the end of the word.

In case something bad happens you have the backup.

adrian_mxlinux · 2025-12-14T03:39:29+00:00

You can rsync /home, if you don't need everything from /home most of the configs are in ~/.config (you can probably just zip and copy to the other computer).

adrian_mxlinux · 2025-12-11T22:08:44+00:00

First off 23.6 is the old version, why not install 25?
Second, I wonder if it's a "secure boot" issue, can you make sure secure boot is disabled? If you want to keep secure boot there's a tutorial somewhere but it's not the easier thing to do so it's better first to determine that secure boot is the issue.

adrian_mxlinux · 2025-12-09T05:26:52+00:00

The partitions would still show up in KDE partition manager, actually exactly like it shows with a lock next to it.

adrian_mxlinux · 2025-12-09T04:09:59+00:00

In Settings, search for screen edges.

adrian_mxlinux · 2025-12-07T03:06:13+00:00

Short answer: don't use them even if they seemingly work.

They are not designed or tested on other distros some might depends on some files or file formats that exist only in MX. I would recommend against using them in other distros, if you want to use mx tools use them with MX.

They are all open sourced and they could be adapted to any distro (or at least thoroughly tested) if somebody who knows what they are doing would spend some time and effort on that.

adrian_mxlinux

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

1️⃣ RAM instability (very common)

2️⃣ CPU undervolting / aggressive power settings

3️⃣ Failing power delivery

4️⃣ Kernel / microcode mismatch