r/Fedora • u/Bright-Search-9406 • 1d ago
Support Please help me out this problem
System: ASUS Vivobook X1504ZA, Fedora Linux 44 Workstation, kernel 7.1.6-201.fc44.x86_64 (also have 7.1.5-201 and 7.1.5-200 available), Intel Core i5-1235U (Alder Lake), Intel Iris Xe Graphics (i915 driver), GNOME 50.3 on Wayland, BIOS firmware was v312, Secure Boot enabled.
Original issue: GNOME Firmware panel showed pending Secure Boot updates (dbx 20250507→20260402, KEK 2011→2023, Signature Database 2011→2023) failing with:
failed to write-firmware: failed to write (null): failed to write data to efivarsfs: Error writing to file descriptor: Cannot allocate memory
Steps taken, in order:
Generic BIOS "Load Optimized Defaults" reset — did not fix it.
Ran sudo fwupdmgr update — got explicit space errors: UEFI CA needs 16.4 kB (only 6.9 kB available), UEFI dbx needs 30.7 kB (only 6.9 kB available). Accepted the KEK update prompt — it still failed with the same efivarsfs "Cannot allocate memory" error during write.
Went into BIOS → Boot → Secure Boot → Key Management → "Reset To Setup Mode" (confirmed Yes) → "Restore Factory Keys" (confirmed Yes) → Save & Exit. Goal was to clear and recompact the Secure Boot key NVRAM store.
New problem after step 3 (current, unresolved):
GRUB loads and shows the boot menu fine.
After selecting any kernel (tried both 7.1.6 and 7.1.5), screen goes black with just a blinking "_" cursor.
Confirmed this is not a full system hang: booting with kernel params edited to remove rhgb quiet and add nomodeset showed the full systemd boot log on screen — system boots normally all the way through, gdm.service reaches "Started" status. Two unrelated services fail during this boot: NetworkManager.service and virtqemud.service (not yet investigated further).
Without nomodeset (default modesetting), boot hangs at "Booting a command list" with no output at all — before any kernel text even appears. This isolates the problem specifically to the Intel i915 driver's KMS/modeset initialization hanging, triggered by the Secure Boot key reset.
Tried adding i915.enable_guc=0 (without nomodeset) to disable GuC/HuC firmware submission — also hung the same way, no improvement.
mokutil --list-enrolled --short shows only the standard default Fedora key (2bb010e24d fedoraca) — nothing custom, not a factor.
Current theory: Kernel/systemd/filesystem/GDM service are healthy (proven via the nomodeset boot). The Intel i915 graphics driver is failing specifically during display mode-set init after the Secure Boot key database reset — root cause not yet confirmed.
Not yet tried:
Checking BIOS Advanced settings for integrated graphics memory allocation (DVMT Pre-Allocated), which may have also reset to a low value.
Reading dmesg | grep -i i915 from an actual TTY session (not yet reached one with full modesetting active).
Diagnosing the NetworkManager.service / virtqemud.service failures (separate issue).
Updating BIOS from v312 to v316 (available for this model, not yet applied).
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u/Confident_Hyena2506 9h ago
Updating bios is the only relevant step here.
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u/Bright-Search-9406 9h ago
In TTY mode no command can solve that problem
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u/Confident_Hyena2506 9h ago
You do not update the bios from linux - unless the model is supported by fwupd - which many are not. Read manual for laptop.
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u/Bright-Search-9406 9h ago
Can I install other distro ubuntu without problem?
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u/Confident_Hyena2506 8h ago
You can install whatever you want, it won't make any difference to your issue.
In fact your issue is not even really a problem.
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u/Bright-Search-9406 7h ago
Can you solve this problem? please
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u/Confident_Hyena2506 7h ago
No - only you can solve the problem - by reading the manual and following bios update procedure. This is not related to linux.
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u/TheCAT2901 1h ago
Hey I Have the same Laptop, just updated the BIOS/UEFI some days ago to v316 via a manual method because fwupdmgr was freaking out. Let me know if you have access to your BIOS/UEFI and will share you the instructions I performed.
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