Linux Hangs on Threadripper Pro

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GaveUp

New Member
Apr 11, 2016
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Hopefully this is the appropriate place to throw this but with my new build (a 3995WX and WRX80E-SAGE) I'm running in to a couple of odd issues.

Background is it's a new build but the boot drives have been moved over from a prior threadripper build. It's a triple boot setup (debian, gentoo, and windows). The first issue I'm running in to is the gentoo grub is not detected. Yeah, it's an odd setup (the debian partition is really just a I haven't cleaned it up yet holdover). If I start up efi shell I can launch it from there and that part works as expected so I would expect it's something with how it's detecting the efi bits. Oddly the debian grub is detected and it's setup is identical, except being in a different folder.

The second issue I'm running in to is regardless of if it's debian, gentoo, or various distro's install media all hang during boot. If I go gentoo via efi shell it hangs on loading of the initramfs, if I go for debian it hangs just a bit later in the process, and if I boot install media it may or may not be hanging. The one I tested was an arch install and I don't know if it hung or if it just didn't bring up the network. That's still on my list to troubleshoot.

Figured I'd through this post out there in case anyone has run in to similar issues. Random lockups or such after booting would be easier to trouble shoot but getting lockups this early in the boot process is rather unusual. FWIW the windows install boots fine and stress testing the hardware hasn't produced any issues.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
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Alarm bells ring with the WRX80E-SAGE since it's an Asus board and IME their linux support is generally pretty poor. Hopefully it's a mis-print but their site only mentions support for Win 10 (not even the Server editions which is strange in itself).

Do I understand correctly from what you say above that:
* You've got three separate installs, are these all on one drive or split across multiple?
* Are they all UEFI boot (all in the same ESP?) or a mix and match of UEFI/BIOS?
* You can boot and run the pre-existing installation discs...?
* ...but if you try a fresh install the process will invariably hang...?

These are relatively new and relatively niche so I don't expect they may have had a huge amount of testing, so it's possible the older kernels typically in use on installer media don't play ball with the new kit. If you're trying a fresh install of debian, there was a new RC of DI recently which should include the relatively current 5.10 kernel.

There should be anything to stop you from running a pre-existing install from A. N. Other x86-64 computer though (assuming you're not using a stripped custom build or anything). Although my first worry would always be BIOS shonkiness.
 

GaveUp

New Member
Apr 11, 2016
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So I've been able to get it booting, though, not without a a couple of oddities to still sort out. blacklisting nouveau on an arch livecd was enough to get me to a shell which revealed what was going on with the apparent hang. It wasn't actually hanging, though, there is something strange going on with the framebuffer. After the initial boot I lose all text consoles. I'll chalk that up to some kernel setting I need to track down and tweak.

The problem ended up being that was actually masking the "can import pool" issue (since the drive was migrated). An import/export via the livecd sorted that out and I had a bootable and usable system. The two things I still need to sort out are, obivous, the framebuffer issue and why grub isn't detected as a bootable entry for efi.