Re: Repeated failure of install of Jessie
On Wednesday 30 March 2016 17:42:14 Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> 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.
Thank you so much, Henrique. I am about to go away and am a bit rushed, so
what you have told me is that I had better not touch it until I get back!
And perhaps should consider Scratch. Or hold my nose and stay on Ubuntu for
a bit. I'll deal with it next week and report back.
> 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
No, I haven't updated it. And I am not even going to try and update the BIOS
while I am feeling rushed and stressed and am very short of time.
> 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).
If I manage to get it on at all, the first thing I shall have to do is
obviously install a backports kernel!
>
> BTW, Gigabye is shipping outdated components on that brand new BIOS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.
:-(
Thank you so much, Henry. I'll report back if I am still upright and sane
after all this!!
Lisi
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