Re: Gigabyte MP30-AR1
On Fri, Sep 09, 2016 at 06:29:02PM +0100, Phil Endecott wrote:
> Dear Experts,
>
> I've splashed out and bought myself a Gigabyte MP30-AR1. This is
> a "server" board with an Applied Micro X-Gene processor.
>
> There are various reports of people installing distributions including
> Debian on the previous MP30-AR0. The difference between the -AR0 and
> the -AR1 is that mine ships with UEFI, while the earlier board shipped
> with U-Boot. I think that apart from that the boards are identical.
>
> So far my attempts at installing Debian have not been successful.
> I have, however, managed to install CentOS! So there is hope. In
> each case I've put an ISO image onto a flash drive; UEFI has detected
> this and presented it in its boot menu. Then GRUB runs successfully,
> but it seems to fail to start the installer's kernel; with the current
> strech/sid installer mini.iso (http://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/sid/main/installer-arm64/current/images/netboot/mini.iso)
> I get:
>
> EFI stub: Booting Linux Kernel...
> ConvertPages: Incompatible memory types
> EFI stub: EFI_RNG_PROTOCOL unavailable, no randomness supplied
> EFI stub: Using DTB from configuration table
> EFI stub: Exiting boot services and installing virtual address map...
> OSBootEvent = Success
> L3c Cache: 8MB
My understanding is that UEFI on arm can provide either a FDT or ACPI
(Doing both means ACPI is used and FDT ignored). So that message about
using the DTB from the config table sounds like the kernel found the FDT
(flattened device tree).
I must admit I am not sure if those message are from UEFI, the boot
loader, or the kernel. I haven't checked if Debian's arm64 installer
is supposed to work with UEFI yet. The ports page seems to indicate it
does on at least some machines.
> One possibility is that I just need to supply a suitable console=
> argument to the installer kernel command line; this seemed to help in
> some of the -AR0 installation reports. I've tried various things but
> none of them help. Maybe I just don't know what the installer kernel
> thinks the serial port is called.
That is quite possible. If you boot the centos installer, can you ask
it what /proc/cmdline says the console is? Or check dmseg.
> Another thought is related to device tree blobs. I see that the ISO
> image contains DTBs for various boards, including the X-Gene Mustang,
> but not for this board. How are device trees supposed to work with
> UEFI? Does the ISO image have to provide it?
No UEFI is supposed to provide it.
> Or perhaps there is something else I've overlooked. What do you suggest?
> (Where do the experts on X-Gene and UEFI etc. hang out?) Perhaps it
> would be easiest to debootstrap from CentOS!
Hopefully it won't be that bad. :)
--
Len Sorensen
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