Does normal GRUB behaviour match my description below?
My original description follows; I edited my question to enable a yes/no answer. If others feel my GRUB is behaving as expected, I will focus on hardware issues and assume Elementary OS has nothing to do with my boot problem, and consider this answered.
I want my laptop to boot reliably. Boot fails if I leave it powered down for about 3 days, otherwise well-behaved. I hope advice here can help me understand what to investigate.
- Dell Latitude D830
- 4GB RAM
- boot 500GB SATA SSD
- Elementary OS 5.1.7 Hera
- original Win7 HDD no problems
- swapped HDD with SSD and Elementary Juno after coffee tragedy
- no change fresh PRAM battery
After lengthy power-down periods, boot goes to GRUB. Workaround by selecting <Advanced options for elementary/elementary, with linux 4.15.0-122-generic (recovery mode)>. This option fails automatic checks and requests to run fsck manually. I run fsck manually on the only drive I know, <fsck /dev/sda1>—"all" switch doesn't find it—then reboot behaves properly and waits for input at the Elementary OS graphical login prompt. I never experience odd behaviour while in use. I've tried "Boot Repair" application, but after reporting repairs it lacks long-term effect.
2 anomalies:
- sometimes I reboot and need to repeat fsck again, but I always win in the end
- sometimes I'll make it as far as using the Elementary graphic interface, then AppCentre updates choke, black screen reboot, then GRUB reboot. Never happens elsewhere, only occasionally during AppCentre updates on boot.
Is the Elementary/Linux side of things behaving as expected?