Re: Repeated failure of install of Jessie
On Wed, Mar 30, 2016, at 07:21, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> Yes, I have finally found out. It's a Giga-Byte GA-H110M-S2H.
Oho, that tells me a lot.
First, it tells me your specific motherboard and processor won't work
well (as in it will be quite crash-prone) *unless* you updated its
"BIOS" (really, UEFI) since about a week ago. Did you?
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5606#bios
Second, it tells me you have a 6th gen Intel Core processor (aka Intel
"Skylake"), which, on top of requiring a very recent BIOS to be stable,
also wants a Linux kernel with some very recent fixes... fixes that
even the very latest Debian installer kernel is unlikely to have *yet*.
The Ubuntu installer has a different kernel than Debian's, so it will
behave differently (and from your report, it does *much* better on Intel
Skylake-based systems right now).
BTW, Gigabye is shipping outdated components on that brand new BIOS
update for your motherboard (at least the processor microcode is far
older than it should be), which isn't a good sign at all. Still, it
should be much better than the defective Intel firmware that is inside
their next-to-latest BIOS for that motherboard, so, please update your
BIOS if you didn't do that already.
Do be careful while updating your BIOS, it is the kind of thing you need
to get right at the first time. If you don't have a second computer,
print out the update instructions and also the "recovery instructions"
for when things go wrong. Have whatever is necessary for the recovery
procedure prepared ahead of time. Read everything carefully. Find a
way to minimize the risk of a power loss during the BIOS update.
And get used to it: you bought an Intel Skykale system, you also bought
the need for periodic BIOS updates for a while yet... even if it wasn't
written like that in the tin ;-)
Anyway, after the BIOS update, please give another try at the installer.
Hopefully, it will work, but given the outdated microcode inside that
latest BIOS update, it might not fix everything that it could/should.
If the installer still hangs even after the BIOS update, please try to
add the boot parameter: "intel_idle.max_cstate=7". If that doesn't
work, try it with "intel_idle.max_cstate=0", which will switch the
kernel to a safer -- but a lot less efficient -- idle driver
("acpi_idle"). When using "acpi_idle", the BIOS settings matter a lot
more, so you may try changing them too (set the maximum C state in BIOS
to 7 as well, or maybe to 3 if that doesn't work).
Boot parameters for the installer:
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch05s03.html.en
(it is the same for amd64).
Also, try both text mode and graphical mode for the installer, much of
the kernel issues with Skylake are related to the Intel GPU, so which
mode you use might make a difference.
Last point: some people experiencing Skylake hangs had to RMA their
Intel processor, and it helped some while others did not report any
change. But these were "K" processors -- the ones for overclocking. I
found no reports of RMAs helping users of non-K processors. I don't
think it is your case anyway, because your system behaved much better
under Ubuntu, while those who had broken processors had the same hang
issues on every O.S they tried, even Windows 10.
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@debian.org>
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