Me and my brothers each own a Thinkpad x131e and were running Ubuntu 20.04 with tlp very smoothly. Until with the recent kernel update 5.13 three weeks ago each of us encountered the error `Error: The Non-Volatile Variable Storage is About Full` on boot. At first the error could be ignored by entering BIOS setup and save settings. But after a few restarts it was stuck when the error message appears, not even being able to enter BIOS setup or to boot. Unlike newer Thinkpads (e.g. X1) this model does not provide a firmware option to clear the NVRAM storage if it is full. Two of us could not resolve the issue before this to happen – so our ThinkPads are now BRICKED!!! At least one of us could rescue his Laptop so far by deleting the dump-* files in /etc/firmware/efi/efivars and not restarting the laptop, only using standby. We then found the fix by https://gist.github.com/roadkell/9e98db6656e28fbbf1bf51082040f67f and manually installing the acpi-call module 1.2.2 from the nix-community made the error on boot go away. So big thanks to them!
I know this bug is not the fault of the Ubuntu team, but nevertheless it's quite unacceptable that an update destroys our hardware. This got me in the middle of my exams and a project I had to finish. I know some people would say this laptop model is quite old, buy a new one. But I choose Ubuntu because of sustainability – because it doesn't force you to buy new hardware every two years. Me and my brothers had our ThinkPad x131e's perfectly up to speed with modern SSD and RAM doing audio editing and blender animations. And now it's just not booting anymore because NVRAM memory chip is full. So I suggest getting the acpi-call package version 1.2.2 into every release of Ubuntu as soon as possible so no more hardware gets destroyed! I hope I will find someone who can somehow physically reset the chip on the motherboards that are now unbootable. Removing the CMOS-Battery did not clear the NVRAM. Any thoughts on this? Any help appreciated! -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1953261 Title: kernel >= 5.13 BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-call/+bug/1953261/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
