MX-19 Live system booted from DVD only works with "toram" [Solved]

[tpoindex]

I am trying to install MX-19 and have found that I can only get the Live system to run by adding "toram" as a boot option.
I am booting from a DVD I burned from the 64bit ISO. My machine is 10 years old machine (no UEFI, just BIOS) and have been running various Ubuntu
versions for those 10 years, along with dual booting Window 10.

Booting from DVD with default options proceeds until the X desktop is ready to launch, but results in a black screen.
The last kernel message I see ("Alt-F1") is "Starting SMB/CIFS daemon".
I've found that the F4 boot option "toram" is the only option that does allow the Live system to fully boot. I've started the Installer, and it
does recognize my drives, but haven't yet completed the install. The F6 boot options ("Save video", "Fail Sate", "noxorg", etc.) have no effect,
and all result in a black screen. I also have a Xubuntu 19.10 Live DVD which boots to it's desktop environment with no problems, using
boot defaults.

A couple of questions I have:

• Should I expect any problems booting if I try to fully install MX-19?
• Are older, BIOS-only machines supported in MX-19? (documentation talks about UEFI and UEFI Legacy Mode)

I'd rather not fully install MX if boot issues are expected.

Machine details:
Gigabyte X58A motherboard /w Award Bios, Intel i7, Nvidia GTX-660 (noveau driver seems to work fine), SATA connected hard drives & DVD.

Thanks for any comments.
-Tom

[fehlix]

Actually the toram option is meant to be used for slow DVDs or slow USB2 LiveMedia to boot from, in order to have a trouble free Liveboot experience. In addition, I'd suggest to try the system from a LiveUSB, before installing. You can run a LiveUSB with enabled persistence like an installed system, when having created with MX Live-USB-maker with full-featured mode. Also sometimes on a dual GPU system it might be better to disable Nvidia with using nouveau.modeset=0 boot parameter/option
or try the "vcard=menu" option, which allows you to select a found videocard.
You can also try to install nvidia-driver within the live-system (with enabled persistence, so you can check out before installing how it works.
The LiveSystem and installed system do work with both BIOS (also called now legacy or CSM) or UEFI.

[seaken64]

I'm with fehlix. Try USB.

Seaken64

[tpoindex]

Thanks for the suggestions, dd'ing the ISO image out to a USB drive and booting from that does indeed fully bring up the Live system with default boot options. Still strange that the DVD media had that problem. That was the first time I've seen that behaviour from any Live CD/DVD, and as I mentioned, a current Xubuntu 19.10 DVD works just fine.

Next up, finishing my MX install !

[tpoindex]

Update - although I was able to easily boot the Live system from a USB drive, installing MX failed. Installation to my /dev/sda device was exceedingly slow. I allowed over three and a half hours before activity ground to a halt, the installer indicated about 90% installed. No other progress was made. I killed the installer, and tried again, having the same result.

Since I had been running Xubuntu 19.10 with no problems, I reinstalled Xubuntu just to have a working system. That install proceeded as expected, taking probably 25-30 minutes, including on-the-fly package updates.

I did some more diagnosis with the MX Live USB, and noticed that my machine's disk activity LED was pulsing steadily every second, even with no activity. Checking 'dmesg' showed a lot of SATA messages, but not really errors, just a lot of 'SATA link up...' and 'configured for UDMA....'. Running 'hdparm -Tt /dev/sda' showed buffered disk reads at a measly 6.4 MB/sec. Running the same command under Xubuntu gives me 120 MB/sec.

On my machine, I have /dev/sda and the DVD plugged into the same port (as master/slave), my /dev/sdb was on another port (as master). Unplugging the DVD and rebooting into the MX Live USB restored the disk performance to normal. This is definitely an issue with how the MX kernel disk/SATA drivers are configured, at least on the Live system. I moved the DVD SATA cable to master on a third SATA port, and that still allows both drives to run a full bandwidth.

Obviously I have found a workaround for this issue, but since I have been running and upgrading Ubuntu/Xubuntu on this system and the same physical drive configuration since 2011 with no problems, there's certainly something not quite right the the MX config. I'll be filing a bug with more information.

Does the Live system use a different kernel than a running installed system?

Edit:
Bugzilla: https://bugs.mxlinux.org/show_bug.cgi?id=238

[figueroa]

It would be interesting to know what your hardware really is. Are all of your drives really SATA and not IDE? See this link about IDE vs SATA with consideration of master/slave. https://www.techspot.com/community/topi ... ave.78901/

[tpoindex]

At least the docs say they're SATA :-)

HDD (x2) https://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/sup ... 29369b.pdf
DVD: http://gscs-b2c.lge.com/downloadFile?fi ... 275984.pdf

Granted, these are 9 years old, but are still in good shape. I monitor drive quality with smartctl on a regular basis.

Before re-cabling:

Code: Select all

Link /sys/class/ata_link/link12 Speed 1.5 Gbps
     Device HKDP221516WL 4S 1.09 MARVELL VIRTUALL
Link /sys/class/ata_link/link17 Speed 3.0 Gbps
     Device 6VPAYEHC CC3E ST31000528AS Ac4i tp K00ABSI0709 TN03 HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH22NS50
Link /sys/class/ata_link/link18 Speed 3.0 Gbps
     Device 9VPAXR9B CC3E ST31000528AS Ac4h tp

From this handy little script I found:

Code: Select all

for i in `grep -l Gbps /sys/class/ata_link/*/sata_spd`; do
  echo Link "${i%/*}" Speed `cat $i`
  cat "${i%/*}"/device/dev*/ata_device/dev*/id | perl -nE 's/([0-9a-f]{2})/print chr hex $1/gie' | echo "    " Device `strings` | cut -f 1-3
done

Edit:
"master" vs. "slave" is terminology that appears in the BIOS setup on my mobo. Under Linux, the drives show up as ata17.00 (/dev/sda), ata17.01 (/dev/sr0, i.e. DVD drive), ata18.00 (/dev/sdb)

[figueroa]

At least the docs say they're SATA :-)

HDD (x2) https://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/sup ... 29369b.pdf
DVD: http://gscs-b2c.lge.com/downloadFile?fi ... 275984.pdf

Yes, the doc's are for SATA drives. On the 28th page (page 22) of the Seagate manual, it reads:

Code: Select all

Each  drive  on  the  Serial  ATA  interface  connects  point-to-point  with  the  Serial  ATA  host  adapter.
[b]There  is  no  master/slave[/b]  relationship  because  each  drive  is  considered  a  master  in  a  point-to-point
relationship.  If  two  drives are attached on one Serial ATA host adapter, the host operating system views the two
devices as if they were both “masters” on two separate ports. Both drives behave as if they are Device 0 (master) devices.

Did you really have two SATA drives on one SATA port? 7-pin SATA port? Not 40 pin ribbon cable? I can see the kernel having a problem with that and it hung up on your DVD drive at the point that you described. With the toram setting, control is turned over to the image that was copied to RAM. Which also explains why booting from the USB flash drive worked.

I just finished installing (10 minutes max) MX-19 (January snapshot iso) to a 20 Gig partition, /dev/sda1, on an old desktop PC with two IDE hard drives (master/slave), with a SATA optical drive (DVD), from a full-featured live-usb, after which it booted in about 20 seconds.

See my lspci and lscpu below.

Code: Select all

$ lspci
00:00.0 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 Memory Controller (rev a1)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 LPC Bridge (rev a2)
00:01.1 SMBus: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 SMBus (rev a2)
00:01.2 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 Memory Controller (rev a2)
00:02.0 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 USB 1.1 Controller (rev a3)
00:02.1 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 USB 2.0 Controller (rev a3)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI bridge (rev a1)
00:05.0 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
00:06.0 IDE interface: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 IDE (rev a2)
00:07.0 Bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 Ethernet (rev a2)
00:08.0 IDE interface: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 SATA Controller (rev a2)
00:08.1 IDE interface: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 SATA Controller (rev a2)
00:09.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
00:0b.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
00:0d.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430] (rev a2)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 10h Processor HyperTransport Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 10h Processor Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 10h Processor DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 10h Processor Miscellaneous Control
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 10h Processor Link Control
01:06.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82557/8/9/0/1 Ethernet Pro 100 (rev 04)

Code: Select all

$ lscpu
Architecture:        x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):      32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:          Little Endian
Address sizes:       48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
CPU(s):              2
On-line CPU(s) list: 0,1
Thread(s) per core:  1
Core(s) per socket:  2
Socket(s):           1
NUMA node(s):        1
Vendor ID:           AuthenticAMD
CPU family:          16
Model:               2
Model name:          AMD Athlon(tm) 7850 Dual-Core Processor
Stepping:            3
CPU MHz:             1400.000
CPU max MHz:         2800.0000
CPU min MHz:         1400.0000
BogoMIPS:            5625.51
Virtualization:      AMD-V
L1d cache:           64K
L1i cache:           64K
L2 cache:            512K
L3 cache:            2048K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):   0,1
Flags:               fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc cpuid extd_apicid pni monitor cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs hw_pstate vmmcall npt lbrv svm_lock

[tpoindex]

Right, these are SATA drives, with SATA cables, plugged into different sockets. As I said, the BIOS reports these as "Master" vs "Slave", which could be just some left over terminology from IDE days.

Also curious, I wonder why Linux reports these two physical ports as "ata17.0" and "ata17.1". Seems to indicate some linkage controller-wise.

Mobo info: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA ... D3R-rev-20
manual: https://download1.gigabyte.com/Files/Ma ... v2.0_e.pdf

See page 28:
port SATA2_0: Seagate Barracuda as /dev/sda
port SATA2_1: Seagate Barracuda as /dev/sdb
port SATA2_2: LG DVD as /dev/sr0

I have since moved the DVD to port GSATA3_6. This is the configuration that allows the disk drives to work properly under the MX kernel.

See page 49 of the manual where "Master" and "Slave" are referenced for SATA.

Still interesting that this cabling config had been working for the last nine years under Ubuntu kernels.
And to be clear - I consider MX booted from the DVD, it just couldn't bring up the desktop (and not because of NVidia hardware.) Knowing the SATA drive issues, seems likely something to do with reading disk.

I've been running Linux since kernel 0.96 (~50 SLS diskettes, baby!). It's been a relief not have to worry much about hardware for the past 10-12 years, until now :-)
And since I've found a workaround, all that remains is the mystery of why one kernel build works fine, but another demonstrates problems.

Cheers, and thanks for your interest in exploring this issue.

[dolphin_oracle]

do you have a IDE compatibility mode enabled in your bios?