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For no obvious reason Ubuntu 16.04 has started going into kernel panic at boot time with the "MP-BIOS... etc. " error. I can still boot from the live CD that I used for installing the system. I have seen numerous articles about changing the boot options to noapic, nolapic, etc. but how can I change /etc/defaults/grub if the system won't even boot?? I can get to the grub command line by tying "c" at the menu but don't know what to do then. Rank amateur. All help gratefully received. BTW it's an old Dell Dimension E521.

Neil Higgins
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  • Does the same happens when booting an older kernel? –  Jan 19 '18 at 17:33
  • No. With older kernels, I saw a startup message indicating that the 8254 timer is not connected to the IO-APIC, but the system still started ok. I assume the message was to indicate that the system would be configured to ignore the issue. Indeed this is what happened for a while on 16.04, then I must have done an update which introduced a regression. I fixed the problem by booting from CD, hand editing grub.cfg on the hard disk to add "noapic nolapic" to the boot line, booting from the hard disk, changing /etc/default/grub on the hard disk, and finally doing sudo update-grub. – Neil Higgins Jan 22 '18 at 06:45

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I have the same machine with the same OS version and had the same problem while doing a clean install from an USB stick after a change of disk.

I was able to solve it by:

  • selecting F6 Options from the menu at the beginning of the install.
  • This displays the noapic nolapic values which can then be set appropriately. How? What value?

  • After the install I:

    • checked the grub file How? and the values were still there.
    • Soft reboot and poweroff reboot were all good.

I subsequently did a release upgrade to 18.04 and all is working ok.

Fabby
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user3666822
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  • Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! **;-)** Could you please add a little more detail? What *exactly* does the OP have to do? How? Do you have any additional [Tips or Tricks](/help/how-to-answer)? Please **[edit]** your post to add information before the system deletes this because of low quality... **:-(** – Fabby Sep 05 '18 at 15:51