Returning to my office after the Easter break, I found machine Bach had
frozen - no activity at all. On reboot, there was a message "Cannot
start mdmonitor.service". Seems mdadm.config suddenly needs a MAILADDR
entry. Next reboot, freezes on "Checking for new hardware". Gave up but
left it switched on. Today, added "nomodeset" to grub line, now I get
"checking for new hardware [ OK ]"
but it still freezes. The blue "disk activity" LED flashes irregularly
so there is still something going on.
But, this is the bizarre bit: I got a confirmation email from Bach at
04:06 this morning saying the daily dnf run had upgraded 9 packages!
(Machine Haydn next door to Bach upgraded 10 packages)
Thoughts:something has upset the video setup so startx can't/won't work?
Can't rule out fiddle fingers, because my grandson slept there for a
couple of nights - 17 so he should know better, but still, he's a boy.
Any ideas anyone please?

--
Grimble
Machine 'Haydn' running Plasma 5.27.10 on 6.6.120-desktop-1.mga9 kernel.
Mageia release 9 (Official) for x86_64


--- MBSE BBS v1.1.7 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On Tue, 07 Apr 2026 11:04:26 -0400, Grimble <grimble@nomail.afraid.org> wrote:

Returning to my office after the Easter break, I found machine Bach had frozen - no activity at all. On reboot, there was a message "Cannot
start mdmonitor.service". Seems mdadm.config suddenly needs a MAILADDR
entry. Next reboot, freezes on "Checking for new hardware". Gave up but
left it switched on. Today, added "nomodeset" to grub line, now I get "checking for new hardware [ OK ]"
but it still freezes. The blue "disk activity" LED flashes irregularly
so there is still something going on.
But, this is the bizarre bit: I got a confirmation email from Bach at
04:06 this morning saying the daily dnf run had upgraded 9 packages!
(Machine Haydn next door to Bach upgraded 10 packages)
Thoughts:something has upset the video setup so startx can't/won't work? Can't rule out fiddle fingers, because my grandson slept there for a
couple of nights - 17 so he should know better, but still, he's a boy.
Any ideas anyone please?

Boot to run level 3 by appending " 3" to the boot time command line options, and check
"journalctl -b -1 --no-h" to see what messages there are.

Just fyi, run level 3 is a symlink for multi-user.target.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

--- MBSE BBS v1.1.7 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

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--- MBSE BBS v1.1.7 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)

On 14/4/26 01:03, Grimble wrote:

Thanks, Dave. I found a depressing number of red/orange lines in the journal, including:
Advice to switch to NetworkManager (not my problem surely?)
"Argh! No valid geometry found" for each of my 3 Raid5 discs
HDIO_GETGEO on /dev/sda succeeded (also sdb, sdc, sdd), followed by
running blkid -o  udev -p /dev/sda1 etc etc
unknown line (DRIVER2_NEEDS_OPEN_KERNEL_MODULES    (8 times)
kvm_amd: SVM disabled (by BIOS) in MSR_VM_CR on CPU3
ACI Warning: SystemIO range conflicts  with OpRegion......
systemd[1]: mem_fdcreate() called without MFD _EXEC or MFD_NOEXEC_SEAL set

I guess the place to start is to check all 4 disks for errors.
Graeme

That sort of thing terrifies me
Without access to google or forums or a spare PC I live in a low level
anxiety
The least to prepare is an install media on a stick and a spare HD

--
faeychild
Running kde on 6.6.130-desktop-1.mga9 kernel.
Mageia release 9 (Official) for x86_64

--- MBSE BBS v1.1.7 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (2:250/1@fidonet)