Re: [gentoo-user] New AMD hardware. Can't boot.

[Mick]

On Thursday 20 Apr 2017 18:26:43 Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Hello, Gentoo.
>
> The saga of my new AMD Ryzen machine: I've installed Gentoo onto
> (mdadam) RAID-1 on two MVMe Samsung 960 EVO M.2 SSDs, one of them being
> plugged into the motherboard, the other in a carrier card plugged into
> the second PCIe x16 slot.
>
> At least, I've got as far as the point where I need to boot into the
> newly installed system.  The machine doesn't boot.  In its attempts, it
> displays an underline cursor on a blank 80 x 25 screen, flips this
> cursor nearer the middle of the screen once or twice, then hangs.
>
> The SSDs are partitioned with GPT.  The boot loader is grub2.  I've
> taken care to follow the instructions in the Gentoo handbook to try to
> avoid missing out some little detail.  However, I've never used grub2
> before, so quite possibly I have missed something out.
>
> It's also possible that the motherboard's BIOS is still too buggy to
> support booting from an NVMe drive.  (It's an Asus Prime X370-Pro: I've
> already had to upgrade the BIOS once (to version 0604) to get the
> installation CD to be recognised at all.)
>
> Asus doesn't have email support, they merely have an http site where one
> can register and ask for help, if one doesn't mind their obnoxious
> ambiguous "privacy" policy.  I do mind, particularly after having paid
> good money for a product which is only partially working.
>
> The BIOS boot sections are puzzling.  If I disable what they call
> "OPROM" booting (i.e. MBR), the BIOS no longer displays the three drives
> (two SSDs + DVD) as booting options.  There is an ostensible setting
> called "secure boot" which is enabled, and I haven't found any way of
> disabling it.

If you cannot find a way to disable Secure Boot you will need to use a kernel 
image which has been digitally signed by RHL, or Microsoft.  Have a look here 
(random page on Google search):

https://www.howtogeek.com/175641/how-to-boot-and-install-linux-on-a-uefi-pc-with-secure-boot/

If you obtain the necessary key you should be able to sign your kernel/initrd 
and then use these to boot your PC without disabling secure boot.  Some binary 
distros RHL/Ubuntu et al probably provide digitally signed images to try.


> When I booted from the minimal CD, did it boot in MBR or GPT mode?  How
> do I tell?

Check you've disabled your Compatibility Support Module so the MoBo will not 
try to use legacy BIOS boot mode with MBR, rather than UEFI.  After it boots 
check if you can list the directory /sys/firmware/efi.  If you get a result 
like this:

$ ls -la /sys/firmware/efi
ls: cannot access '/sys/firmware/efi': No such file or directory

you have booted in BIOS mode.  However, if you get a message like this:

$ ls -la /sys/firmware/efi
total 0
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root    0 Apr 20 17:28 .
drwxr-xr-x   6 root root    0 Apr 20 17:28 ..
-r--r--r--   1 root root 4096 Apr 20 20:07 config_table
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root    0 Apr 20 17:28 efivars
-r--r--r--   1 root root 4096 Apr 20 20:07 fw_platform_size
-r--r--r--   1 root root 4096 Apr 20 20:07 fw_vendor
-r--r--r--   1 root root 4096 Apr 20 20:07 runtime
-r--------   1 root root 4096 Apr 20 20:07 systab
drwxr-xr-x 134 root root    0 Apr 20 20:07 vars

then you have booted a UEFI system.


> Can anybody suggest ideas to get this machine booting?  Would
> partitioning the drives with MBR, and trying to boot that way help, for
> example?  I really don't want to do that, though, though if it's the
> only way to get my machine booting, I'd do it.

Have you tried booting with one disk only?  This should confirm if your set up 
and drivers are appropriate for your hardware.

-- 
Regards,
Mick