UEFI - boot freezes before initrd [SOLVED]

Zucca · Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 8:29 pm Post subject:

I've been having one of the worst influenzas ever. I finally got some energy and motivation.

I tried the oldest 4.14 gentoo-sources kernel from gentoo tree with the same .config but ran make oldconfig first. Same result.
I tried make allyes from latest 4.14. Same result.

Few things to consider now:

My server has almost identical setup and UEFI boots just fine
- FX-8350 vs. Opteron 3380
- both boot from USB stick
- both have root partition on multi-device btrfs
- Both on amd64 (stable)
There were no problems when BIOS booting
Gentoo Live boots just fine, but make allyes -kernel does not

With allyes kernel there should be more than the few messages rEFInd or grub prints after choosing the boot entry.
I'm soon gonna give a MBR bootloader a try. This is driving my crazy.
_________________
..: Zucca :..
Gentoo IRC channels reside on Libera.Chat.
--

Marlo · Veteran Joined: 26 Jul 2003 Posts: 1591

Zucca · Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 10:32 pm Post subject:

/boot - ext4
/boot/efi - FAT32
/ - btrfs

_________________
..: Zucca :..
Gentoo IRC channels reside on Libera.Chat.
--

Zucca · Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2018 4:35 pm Post subject:

One more oddity: The Gentoo Live I use has 4.14.65 kernel. That's the same version I've been trying to get working...
Although, now I know it's not the kernel to blame. Also I could use the same config as the live to get started...

Fingers crossed once again.
_________________
..: Zucca :..
Gentoo IRC channels reside on Libera.Chat.
--

skellr · Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2018 7:25 pm Post subject:

Zucca · Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2018 8:51 pm Post subject:

My root partition is multi-device btrfs. btrfs device scan needs to be executed before mounting root.
There is a way to mount multi-device btrfs via kernel command line by specifying each device by its device node. That isn't very realiable, unless for example grub could probe and list all filesystems by LABEL or by UUID and then construct rest of the kernel command line...

I think it can. Hmmm! I think I need to try that out... I need to script it myself. The method uses multiple device= arguments for rootfsflags.
_________________
..: Zucca :..
Gentoo IRC channels reside on Libera.Chat.
--

joanandk · Apprentice Joined: 12 Feb 2017 Posts: 169

Hi Zucca,

If I read all your posts correctly, the situation is the follwoing:
a) With a live cd you are able to boot your system in UEFI mode.
b) Your gentoo installation is able to start in BIOS emulation mode.
c) Your same gentoo is unable to start in UEFI only mode and gets "stuck" after initrd is loaded

Did you enable "VGA/VBE/EFI FB as generic system framebuffer" under bus options and "Simple framebuffer support" under frame buffer devices?

I would suggest you compare the lspci with live cd under UEFI mode and lspci with your system under BIOS mode. I know that Apple changes pci-id depending on BIOS emulation or UEFI mode.

BR

Zucca · Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 5:57 pm Post subject: