nomodeset required for booting certain hardware

[agracey]

What steps did you take and what happened:

I'm reporting on behalf of a user who is having issues booting Elemental Teal. They were able to work around the issue by pressing e and adding nomodeset to the kernel params.

They are using an AMD Ryzen-based SimplyNUC (https://simplynuc.com/product/llm2v8cy-full/)

What did you expect to happen:

The machine should boot normally without manual intervention.

Environment: (Asking for details and will fill in)

• Elemental release version (use cat /etc/os-release):
• Rancher version:
• Kubernetes version (use kubectl version):
• Cloud provider or hardware configuration:

[kkaempf]

See rancher/elemental-toolkit#1773

[kkaempf]

I'm reporting on behalf of a user who is having issues booting Elemental Teal.

What happened exactly ?

[agracey]

Forwarding the email to you

[kkaempf]

There's no essential information in the email except that the machine "locks up".

Thinking about it, I'd reject this request. Adding nomodeset would work around errors instead of fixing them.
I would document this problem (in FAQ section ?) and encourage people to work with us to get their system properly supported.

[ldevulder]

Just a small comment: nomodset is only useful if KMS (Kernel Mode Setting) is used, but in the scope of Elemental there is no need for GUI in the nodes. So maybe better to "simply" remove it (if it's not already the case, didn't checked).

[Itxaka]

KMS is not only for gui, its also for tty resolution and fast switching. Mainly the kernel can change the graphics itself instead of waiting for the X server to do so.

And if I remember correctly, this is done by the graphic card driver automatically on load, so its part of the boot process.

Im wondering if it may be broke due to how we set our grub config:

set gfxmode=auto
set gfxpayload=keep
insmod all_video
insmod gfxterm
insmod loopback

Maybe we should set the gfxmode to text? No idea to be honest, but as @ldevulder mentions, it makes no sense in the context of the toolkit. We build server distros with it, not GUIs so....

[agracey]

We build server distros with it, not GUIs so....

I need to show you some of the crazier demos that I'm working on -- I'd like to be building wallboards and point of service systems as well 😃

If we removed nomodeset/KMS, would it drop the drm devices from udev? Would startx break?

[Itxaka]

If we removed nomodeset/KMS, would it drop the drm devices from udev? Would startx break?

If Im not mistaken, with nomodeset always enabled it wont load the video drivers and use the efi resolution during boot. And when X loads it should load the drivers at that point...theoretically

Still, as its a radeon driver (vega 7 I think) the kms support should be already in the kernel...there should be no issues with it, althougth amd drivers have always been a cluster****, so no idea if it uses the kernel driver, if it supports kms only, if maybe we are not bundling the drivers in the kernel....needs more investigation. Send me a NUC for testing? :P

[Itxaka]

I need to show you some of the crazier demos that I'm working on -- I'd like to be building wallboards and point of service systems as well smiley

But the services would be running on elemental nodes only right? Then you connect from an external device for those wallboards (like with an RPI)? Or its the idea to have a webview in the same elemental node?

[Itxaka]

I had a look and vega 7 seems to use the amdgpu driver and its available on elemental:

[   55.114296] AMD-Vi: AMD IOMMUv2 functionality not available on this system - This is not a bug.
[   55.524613] [drm] amdgpu kernel modesetting enabled.
[   55.525036] amdgpu: CRAT table not found
[   55.525709] amdgpu: Virtual CRAT table created for CPU
[   55.526365] amdgpu: Topology: Add CPU node

I dont see the firmware files for it though, not sure if we need them or not... kernel-firmware-amdgpu maybe we are missing that package, althougth we install the kernel-firmware-all which should bring all fw packages.

Maybe its just that the package its not available for SLE-Micro-Rancher and we need to ask for it to be included.

@agracey would be awesome to get the dmesg of both with nomodeset and without if its possible via serial or something, because pretty sure that the dmesg of the blank image provides info on what we are missing.

[Itxaka]

Indeed the firmware-amdgpu package does not appear on the installed packages for SLE-micro-rancher...

[Itxaka]

but its on the original SLE15-sp4, so for sure that package is missing

[agracey]

Send me a NUC for testing?

I'm working on that...

Or its the idea to have a webview in the same elemental node?

I'm running X11 in a container as a sidecar 😇

but its on the original SLE15-sp4, so for sure that package is missing

I'll add it to my list for 5.4 unless we need it earlier

More generally, we should document how to change these flags sooner rather than later. That way we aren't locked in to a choice.

[Itxaka]

I'll add it to my list for 5.4 unless we need it earlier

Nice, maybe we should ask why we cherry pick the firmware packages instead of just installing the kernel-firmware-all, size?

I'm running X11 in a container as a sidecar innocent

damn...

More generally, we should document how to change these flags sooner rather than later. That way we aren't locked in to a choice.

I think this is already documented on the toolkit

They should be able to set this by running grub2-editenv /oem/grubenv set extra_cmdline=nomodeset and that should apply that cmdline to the kernel on all entries (active,passive,recovery)

[agracey]

And that command would be run as part of the cloud-config? (Sorry, I feel like the answer is obvious but I want to make sure I'm not missing a part of the puzzle here)

[Itxaka]

They may need to use a DEV image to build their isos with the injected registration, i.e. when calling the elemental-iso-add-registration they migth need to add REPO=Dev in front so it downloads the dev image with the missing firmware, once that is accepted and the iso rebuilt.

That would be simpler than adding the nomodeset

[Itxaka]

@agracey I think the firmware package was added to elemental before cutting the latest release, could you have them try again with the latest stable iso?

If the stable doesnt work, could you indicate them to use the REPO=Dev while injecting the iso so they get the latest dev build and test that?

Also, would be nice if the original reporter could comment on the issue directly so there is a direct communication regarding this, as its probably solved already :)

[kkaempf]

Careful, Dev has the kubebuilder operator. Staging is probably a better choice. 😉

Which reminds me that we should add kernel-firmware-all instead of kernel-firmware-amdgpu.

[Itxaka]

Good point, I forgot that we merged that! Indeed staging should contain the old operator AND the firmware fix. Stable probably too but I dont have the dates too clear.

[kkaempf]

image has kernel-firmware-all meanwhile. Closing.