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 BTW, Gigabye is shipping outdated components on that brand new BIOS 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
