I am a new Linux user. I installed Kubuntu 22.04 on a pc that previously run Windows 7. It was a clean installation, no dual-boot. Well, I managed to overcome the Nvidia issue, where the Kubuntu logo appears to freeze, by doing a 'Recovery boot' and installing all the updates. That went well and now I can log in to the system, but I get the following message on the screen, just after POST and before the Kubuntu logo appears as well as after the logo and before the log-in screen. After that, I can log in with no apparent problems.
This is the message I get:
mtd device must be supplied (device name is empty)
There was also a number at the beginning of the message but I didn't manage to take it down. I don't know if that's important.
I saved the log information to a file and I saw the same message in there too, but that's as far as I could get I'm afraid.
My question is this: Is that message trying to tell me something is seriously wrong and if that's the case what am I supposed to do to make it better?
EDIT
I have searched for information about mtd devices on Google but unfortunately all the sources I came across were in a language that I don't understand. I mean I don't have a degree in Electronics.
So, I simply shut down and then unplugged the computer, waited for a while and then plugged it in and booted again. The first time, the
boot was message-free and I thought I had fixed it but I was wrong.
After a 'reboot' the message was there again.
Then, I thought perhaps a file system check might correct the problem
so I run fsck on the root device from the live usb but it did not find
any errors. However, after that I now get 3 lines of the same message with different random numbers...
And I am totally confused!!! Help please?
EDIT 2
For the sake of completeness, here are the computer specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte P55A-UD4 (rev 2.0)
BIOS: Award Software Intl, version F14
CPU: Intel Core i5 760 @ 2.80GHz
DISK: WDC WD10EZEX-00BBHA0
RAM: 8GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
This is a 12-year-old computer, which by contemporary standards is considered very old I guess. However, it has served me well over the years and the only things I had to replace were the PSU, about 5 years ago, and the hard drive, quite recently. I also updated the BIOS back in 2013. The computer is functioning well, no problems at all. In fact, I have another one with similar specs which is also performing very well. The only deficiency of those systems, always judging by contemporary standards, is that they have legacy BIOS. Personally, I don't see the benefit of UEFI bios for every day desktop users but that is another topic :)
Back to the question then, do you think there may be some conflict due to the fact that my BIOS is not UEFI? I am referring specifically to 'mtd' and 'fwupd' services. Are they actually necessary in my system-case? If not, can they be safely disabled/removed? I don't think I can update firmware on this system and to be honest I don't want to.
EDIT 3
This is now officially confirmed bug of medium importance. Reading through the bug report - link in the comments, below - it appears that
The message is displayed due to a configuration issue of the mtdpstore module
It is not related to failed boots
It also shows on systems with UEFI enabled
There is a proposed workaround available to remove the message
But I have not yet seen any references relating to the meaning of that message. Which mtd device was not supplied, for example, or why the device name was empty? Am I asking too much?
I know this is not about sending a rocket to space! In my humble opinion however, a stable LTS release should not rely on workarounds. Don't get me wrong, I like Ubuntu. It is working well with my hardware and I am happy using it except every now and then I have to deal with weird error descriptions which are rather annoying. To give another example, last year I had to suffer the abominable 'Failed to update metadata for lvfs...' message on my other computer for several months. I just hope this one does not take as long to fix.