Author Topic: Question for fellow Blackbird owners  (Read 6413 times)

Borley

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Question for fellow Blackbird owners
« on: December 28, 2021, 06:40:23 pm »
Do you have any trouble booting Debian?

My C1P9S01 Rev 1.01 has the 2.0 firmware installed. It can boot Fedora and Void successfully.

But it cannot boot any Debian (either install media or an internal drive with Bullseye pre-installed). It just hangs forever at "SIGTERM received, booting...". This was not a problem before installing 2.0 firmware.

MPC7500

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Re: Question for fellow Blackbird owners
« Reply #1 on: December 29, 2021, 09:10:56 am »
I guess, you have to blacklist one of the GPUs before you start the installer. The firmware version doesn't matter.

Borley

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Re: Question for fellow Blackbird owners
« Reply #2 on: December 29, 2021, 05:09:37 pm »
I guess, you have to blacklist one of the GPUs before you start the installer. The firmware version doesn't matter.

I have no dedicated GPU installed when I run the installation media. I would normally set that up after the base system has been installed.

MPC7500

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Re: Question for fellow Blackbird owners
« Reply #3 on: December 29, 2021, 06:02:53 pm »
Oh okay. This is surprising. I did a quick search on the Debian mailing list:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2021/10/msg00096.html

Borley

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Re: Question for fellow Blackbird owners
« Reply #4 on: December 30, 2021, 01:48:20 pm »
Alright, so I'm beginning to see a pattern emerge here. Something about Debian is directing its output to serial on Raptor CS systems, not just Blackbirds.




I went ahead and tried amending the boot arguments for the install media:

Tried passing console=tty0 and console=tty1 as a boot argument after quiet, no success.
Already tried switching boot console from /dev/hvc0 to /dev/tty1 in petiteboot settings, no difference.

Is there some way to update the initramfs of installation images? chroot maybe?

« Last Edit: December 30, 2021, 01:49:51 pm by Borley »

xilinder

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Re: Question for fellow Blackbird owners
« Reply #5 on: December 30, 2021, 03:52:15 pm »
@Borley
I just installed Debian 11.2 Bullseye today, no problems. I used the default install on the AST VGA.
??? Bad download?
Talos II 2x8, 32GB RAM, onboard Microsemi RAID,  AMD WX7100, J.Micron SATA/PATA PCIe adapter. Debian with Mate.

Borley

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Re: Question for fellow Blackbird owners
« Reply #6 on: December 31, 2021, 09:53:53 pm »
I verified the image and signature with Debian role keys and SHA512. The media writes correctly and can be seen from Petiteboot with options for Default Install, Expert Install, Automated Install etc so there does not seem to be an issue with the any of my USB drives or the netinst ISO.

I am not as technically skilled as many of the people here, but I have tried enough things by now only to be able to conclude that there is either something wrong with the board firmware, or there is something wrong with Debian (how they have it configured in public images, perhaps).

The 6 month history of my experience looks like this:
Fully working system with Debian install, no issues 2019 through 2021 ----> Messed up petiteboot password ----> Reflashed PNOR to 1.0 firmware ----> could still boot and install linuxes but encountered graphical display issues (viewable but distorted) ----> upgraded entire firmware from 1.0 to 2.00 ----> Unable to boot (only Debian) ever since

It is the strangest issue I think I have ever seen in all my time working on computers. I am stumped and patiently awaiting my new Blackbird board that has been on back order since 2020. Once I have the new board in-hand, I will compare the issue between them. The real thing twisting the knife in my gut is that Raptor seem to have let go of all their support staff. I am totally on my own.

EDIT: to start the new year on a positive note, I am very lucky to have tons of computer hardware laying around from my work. This allowed me to fall back onto my next best trustworthy system, albeit x86, as a safety net while I sort this issue.
« Last Edit: December 31, 2021, 10:07:55 pm by Borley »

xilinder

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Re: Question for fellow Blackbird owners
« Reply #7 on: January 01, 2022, 07:33:51 am »
That IS strange. Going to take some thinking. ::)
Talos II 2x8, 32GB RAM, onboard Microsemi RAID,  AMD WX7100, J.Micron SATA/PATA PCIe adapter. Debian with Mate.

MPC7500

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Re: Question for fellow Blackbird owners
« Reply #8 on: January 02, 2022, 07:31:09 am »
@Borley: If you have some support ticket numbers, I could post it to Raptor on Twitter.

Borley

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Re: Question for fellow Blackbird owners
« Reply #9 on: January 08, 2022, 03:35:36 pm »
@Borley: If you have some support ticket numbers, I could post it to Raptor on Twitter.

Because I don't use microblogging, that would be much appreciated. There is an open issue at #318083. Maybe I should also link them to this thread from there.

Tried again today through the serial console per other user's recommendations, but found the same message and issue:


I'm not giving up yet, but with each failed attempt I begin to sympathize more with Cypher

MPC7500

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Re: Question for fellow Blackbird owners
« Reply #10 on: January 09, 2022, 10:43:57 am »

Borley

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Re: Question for fellow Blackbird owners
« Reply #11 on: January 14, 2022, 10:01:39 pm »
Support directed me on a few items, they created a dedicated wiki page for the issue. It ended up being that Debian does not enable the ast kernel module out-of-the-box, so needs to be added in manually.

I did some additional testing and found that Devuan is also affected, which would make sense since they are downstream from Debian.