Beowulf install

ve1drg · 2020-05-20 14:03:50

I have Devuan-Ascii running and I am very happy with it. But when there is something new out there, a person just have to give it a try.

So with that I downloaded the latest Beowulf iso and from a disk did the install. It seemed to go ok except at the start.. It was looking for missing files which I noted were the ATH10K files. And those files would naturally be installed in the /lib/firmware directory once the installation was complete.

So without worrying about those missing files I went ahead and did the full install of BeoWulf.

I then had to reboot to bring BeoWulf up and no sir . I never got passed a blank, black screen. I even thought that perhaps if I did Ctrl-Alt F1 or F2 or F4 etc.. that I could get into the installation. But nope!. Nothing. I was locked out. No life whatsoever.

I tried reiinstalling it using whatever alternatives that were there. And I never got passed being able to boot into the system.

I am now lost. I would like to think it might be failing because it is asking for those files. And I had those files on a usb stick and it never took them. And since they are network files I dont know why I wouldnt be able to at least log in.

So if there are any tips out there. That would be great.

Thanks... and by the way ASCII version is super..

Head_on_a_Stick · 2020-05-20 16:50:22

I don't think the graphical desktop would fail because of missing wireless firmware.

Can you boot to a console by adding 4 as a kernel command line parameter?

fsmithred · 2020-05-20 19:20:24

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Can you boot to a console by adding 4 as a kernel command line parameter?

That would be unlikely. Adding s or single would work better. (i.e. would be different from 2-5)

There should be a boot menu entry for 'Recovery mode' which will do the same thing.

ve1drg · 2020-05-20 19:39:48

I have tried everything to get into the Beowulf installation. But nothing seems to work.

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Can you boot to a console by adding 4 as a kernel command line parameter?

I dont know what adding 4 as a kernel means?

Is this a selection I can make from the boot process. Something maybe in the rescue mode?
I am sure I have looked there. But never found anything that worked.

And yes on those missing files. In my opionion too, they should not have stopped me from logging into Beowulf.

But tell me more about these command line paramaters? What and where are they. How are they used..

Thanks..

Head_on_a_Stick · 2020-05-20 20:15:06

ve1drg wrote:

I dont know what adding 4 as a kernel means?

Ignore my suggestion, fsmithred is right. I was getting confused with the Debian boot parameters.

To add s as a kernel command line parameter press either <tab> (for a non-UEFI system) or "e" (for a UEFI system) with the Devuan boot menu entry highlighted and append it at the end of the line that starts with "linux" then press either <return> (non-UEFI) or <ctrl>+x (UEFI) to start the modified entry.

Marjorie · 2020-05-20 23:07:11

Sorry to go back a bit from the useful suggestions about opening Beowulf in a console.

Can you please clarify:

Which Beowulf .iso you are using?

Have you tried to boot up the live Beowulf CD/usb? If so, does that work apart from the wireless (you indicate that there is a problem with the atheros driver)?

Are you doing a full disk on-metal install, a VM install or are you adding Beowulf on an existing system in new partitions(s) with e.g. your ascii install also bootable?

What configuration are you trying to install (partitions/display manager/desktop).

Are you getting any console output before it fails to a blank screen? Usually there is quite a lot of output before it tries to load your chosen graphical interface.

Last edited by Marjorie (2020-05-20 23:07:44)

ve1drg · 2020-05-20 23:53:18

I am trying to install BeoWulf 3.0.0 64bit. And tonight I noticed when I tried to bring it up with it going through all that data stuff before it fails to a black nothing screen - I see it says ......specified kvm group.... and that is it. Everything goes black after that.

I havent tried the live Beowulf version. Yet. But maybe that is something I can try. Its worth it..

The other versions of Devuan are installed on another machine. So there is no conflict.

Also I tried installing Lilo iinstead of grub and it failed with a kernel panic - not syncing...unable to mount. root fs unknown..

Always something. Well. Let me run and try the live version now, before I go crazy. I just dont know what could be stopping Beowulf from booting up.
Strange indeed.

rolfie · 2020-05-21 08:10:27

Some thoughts: The computer seems to be starting, then the screen gors blank. May be the graphics card isn't supported or requires some firmware to work? The kvm group message is just an information that virtualisation isn't enabled in the Bios. That won't stop the boot on real HW.

@OP: its about time to disclose real details about HW and SW. What kinda HW we are talking about? MB and CPU brand please. Graphics card installed? What is lspci | grep VGA telling you? What is "BeoWulf 3.0.0 64bit"???? arm64??? amd64? beta1, beta2, RC or older?

rolfie

Last edited by rolfie (2020-05-21 08:10:58)

Marjorie · 2020-05-21 09:06:45

OK, so you're installing on a different machine than you installed Devuan ASCII on. It could be helpful to tell us what the hardware is:

Processor, UEFI/Legacy BIOS, 32 or 64 bit, Memory, Disk(s) type, Graphics card/adapter, Wireless card.

If you had used the same machine then it is unlikely that the hardware (that worked with ASCII) wouldn't work with Beowulf. Not saying you shouldn't install on a fresh machine.

As you have installed on a different machine then booting up the live CD/usb will allow you to see whether the standard-case Beowulf installation software is compatible with the hardware (graphics, wireless card, etc.) you have on it. You should be able to boot to a graphical screen and (attempt to) configure your wifi
.
It's up to you then, if it works, whether you install from the live CD/usb. If the wireless doesn't work, once configured i.e. you still need additional drivers, and you can't use ethernet then the live CD/usb is not a good idea (nor the netinstall iso).

Also the live CD/usb is limited to a simple, whole disk install and it starts up in XFCE, which may differ from what you want/have been trying to install.

You haven't said which Beowulf iso you have been trying to use:
Beowulf is still Beta. There are now several generation of Beta, the latest is 3, which fixes some of the problems in the earlier versions.
There are also different ISO. The Live iso, the Netinstall iso, the basic (CD1+some of CD2-4) desktop isos and the full (DVD) desktop iso. https://beta.devuan.org/os/documentatio … all-devuan.

Last edited by Marjorie (2020-05-21 09:07:35)

dev-1-dash-1 · 2020-05-21 14:07:19

Does OP have an nvidia graphics card?

ve1drg · 2020-05-21 16:13:37

Well a new day has come along and there is news..

First of all here is where lspci " grep VGA shows..

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation TU116 [GeForce GTX 1660 Ti] (rev a1)

And the news that has come up is that I decided to run that LIVE version of Beowulf on another computer. It is a 5 year old Dell XPS8500. It works well and runs like a champ.

I ran that LIVE dvd on that machine and it WORKED!!!
Wow. Was I ever happy.

So everything comes down to my current machine on which I was trying to run it on.

This current machine is a new XPS8930 with all the bells and whisles. It has the fastest CPU and 32 gigs of ram.
And I believe an upgraded video card too.

But this new machine runs ASCII and JESSIE just fine. As well it runs UBUNTU20.04 just great.

So I am sure it is a video problem, but now I have no idea how to fix that. I guess a new driver comes to mind. But dont know.

This is where I stand. Beowulf looks fine on the old XPS8500 but gets no where on my new XPS8930.

larsH · 2020-05-21 16:45:14

Hi

Try to boot with:
On the Grub menu, hit "e" to edit the entry you are booting and add the following to the end of the "linux..." command line
Code:

rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau

The nouveau driver in beowulf is not compatible with your new graphics card.

If this works you can after install install the nvidia driver. It should be compatible.

Good luck

Lars H

ve1drg · 2020-05-23 13:10:54

Well I am back after a couple days. Its been terrible here where I have tried to get this Beowulf working. Or installed I guess.

I am about to give up. But before that happens, here is what I know so far.

Beuwulf LIVE comes up most of the time, all ok using the LIVE CD. It seems to have something to do with UEFI/Legacy BIOS, .
The CD boots up all ok most of the time. I have made a page of notes on what is happening and now that is confusing to me.

Somehow, if the bios is not set right (uefi or legacy) than I get nothing. But if i pick to boot the disk using the 'sure-thing' line, than it seems to get Beowulf up.
And UEFI and Legacy are important too. Something one works while the other doesn't.

I normally boot JESSIE and ASCII using Legacy. That works great. But not this BEOWULF release. Wow. What a challenge. And I am sure that the problem really is with the (UEFI/Legacy BIOS)..settings.

Why would this release be so sensitve to what you are booting with? But I do see when you install it, that Grub has to sit on a small boot partition that must be formated as DOS. Not EXT4 or something else. This is getting more strange than ever before.

Well - I will try to install this rascal once again, but this time from the cdrom rather than the live disk. This way it will look after the correct setting for grub. I think.
But than, what do I know.

My last question... why is this release so different or complicated, over something like ASCII??

Marjorie · 2020-05-23 13:59:50

Sorry to hear of all your difficulties - this shouldn't be happening.

From your latest report you now seem to be getting stuck at an earlier stage than you did before. Previously it seemed to be a problem with the Nouveau video driver, which LarsH is now reported wont work with your new NVIDIA GPU and has suggested a fix to get you to a console.

FWIW I've now installed Beowulf on two different AMD-64 PCs, one Intel and the other AMD (with NVIDIA graphics) and did not have the particular problems you are now reporting, though to be fair my components are not cutting edge like yours. One of these was an entirely new install and the other was alongside an existing ascii installation.

1) I've always gone for legacy bios. Worked both times. My older motherboard has EFI but not UEFI. With the newer one I had choice in the the BIOS.

2) I've never actually installed from the live ISO, just used to check that I could boot into Beowulf (and get the WiFi working). The live install (if that is what you are using) is designed to be straightforward and therefore pretty unbreakable for a straightforward one-disk install but I'm not aware of exactly what choices it makes for you.

3) if you are using one of the other installers they can get more complicated and there is greater scope to be confused.

However:

3) You don't have to install /boot on a separate partition. It may be a bit more robust to do so if you have more than OS installed or your disk config is complex. On one of of mine I choose to keep it separate/simple because my root and /home partition are mounted as RAID1, on the other because they are LVM.

4) The boot partition doesn't have to be formatted DOS or even EXT2. Both mine are EXT4.

5) The installers themselves haven't changed between ASCII and Beowulf. I note that other users have been finding some bugs in the isos, particularly if burnt to optical CD/DVD, rather than USB, which the developers are fixing, but these are mostly pretty minor.

6) As you're getting inconsistent results it may be worth confirming (if you haven't already done so) that you isos have not got corrupted.

Last edited by Marjorie (2020-05-23 14:10:25)

rolfie · 2020-05-23 15:40:33

Some input to UEFI/CSM. The OP obviously has a brandnew toy, so we can assume the BIOS is fully UEFI compliant.

CSM = traditional BIOS support can be enabled, then the boot disk should be MSDOS partitioned. When you boot the CD don't use the entry that says UEFI before the drives name.

Though I would recommend to use UEFI. Set the drive settings to UEFI driver first or similar, and disable CSM. Secure Boot to Other OS. The boot drive needs to be GPT partitioned. Boot the install CD with the UEFI label before the drives name.

If these dependencies are observed, it should be possible to easily install Beowulf, may be at first with a wired LAN connection to avoid any issues with wifi.

rolfie

Last edited by rolfie (2020-05-23 15:41:43)

ve1drg · 2020-05-23 16:50:11

Well I am about to burn a new DVD disk with the latest BeoWulf. I am going to let it do the partitioning. I wont worry about the bootable paritition being msdos. And the disk by the way is being burnt in/from an optical drive. Hmmmm.

Well - lets see if this works. I was using both the Live CD and the netinst units. So this time its the full shot. All files should be there. and all things should work..

I will let you guys know. And by the way I am going to install Beowulf this time under a UEFI bios. See if that makes any difference rather than under legacy bios.

-----------------------

Marjorie wrote:

Sorry to hear of all your difficulties - this shouldn't be happening.
From your latest report you now seem to be getting stuck at an earlier stage than you did before. Previously it seemed to be a problem with the Nouveau video driver, which LarsH is now reported wont work with your new NVIDIA GPU and has suggested a fix to get you to a console.
FWIW I've now installed Beowulf on two different AMD-64 PCs, one Intel and the other AMD (with NVIDIA graphics) and did not have the particular problems you are now reporting, though to be fair my components are not cutting edge like yours. One of these was an entirely new install and the other was alongside an existing ascii installation.
1) I've always gone for legacy bios. Worked both times. My older motherboard has EFI but not UEFI. With the newer one I had choice in the the BIOS.
2) I've never actually installed from the live ISO, just used to check that I could boot into Beowulf (and get the WiFi working). The live install (if that is what you are using) is designed to be straightforward and therefore pretty unbreakable for a straightforward one-disk install but I'm not aware of exactly what choices it makes for you.
3) if you are using one of the other installers they can get more complicated and there is greater scope to be confused.
However:
3) You don't have to install /boot on a separate partition. It may be a bit more robust to do so if you have more than OS installed or your disk config is complex. On one of of mine I choose to keep it separate/simple because my root and /home partition are mounted as RAID1, on the other because they are LVM.
4) The boot partition doesn't have to be formatted DOS or even EXT2. Both mine are EXT4.
5) The installers themselves haven't changed between ASCII and Beowulf. I note that other users have been finding some bugs in the isos, particularly if burnt to optical CD/DVD, rather than USB, which the developers are fixing, but these are mostly pretty minor.
6) As you're getting inconsistent results it may be worth confirming (if you haven't already done so) that you isos have not got corrupted.

fsmithred · 2020-05-24 12:25:58

The FAT partition needed for UEFI is for the EFI bootloaders. This is not the same as a separate /boot partition. A good reference for UEFI bootloaders is Rod's Books.
https://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/index.html

If you let the installer do the partitioning, it should give you what you need. (Note: the live installer doesn't do any partitioning for you. Only the installer isos do that.)

ve1drg · 2020-05-31 23:02:39

Well - I finally got Beowulf up and workiing on my new/fast machine. But not in the normal way.

What I did was I used apt-get dist-upgrade, and I ended up with Beowulf, from ASCII.

At boot time now I have the choice of booting with 4.19.0.09. Which is my first choice. That one doesnt boot which has the same problem that I have had all along.

The second choice 4.19.0.11 works like a champ. I nearly fell down when it came up just fine.

So now I would like to know how I get edit out that first choice - 4.19.0.09. So when things boot up automaticaly it will pick a kernel that works.

So how can I edit out that first line on the boot-screen,

larsH · 2020-06-01 09:55:16

Hi

You should simply uninstall the old kernel with apt purge linux-image-4.19.0-9-amd64. But be carefull !!! I do not have an 4.19.0.11. I only have 4.19.0.9. So be sure. If you remove the running kernel the system will crash and you cannot reboot (this is called linux for a reason ;-).

Have a nice day
Lars H

Last edited by larsH (2020-06-01 09:55:40)

rolfie · 2020-06-01 10:04:50

Maybe you mix up 4.9 and 4.19? linux-image-4.19.0-9-amd64 is the latest Beowulf/Buster kernel, any 4.9-kernel is ASCII/Stretch. The 4.19er should start automatically.

For very new hardware, it may be an useful option to add backports to the sources.list and to install the 5.5 kernel from there.

rolfie

Last edited by rolfie (2020-06-01 14:47:17)

ve1drg · 2020-06-01 14:12:45

ok. i just purged 4.19.0-9-amd64 and it was removed from my boot list.

great . happy for that.

Now you say i should try kernel 5. how do i do that. is it simple like purging a kernel or is it more involved?

also where do i get it?

And by the was Beowulf looks and runs really well, so far.

larsH · 2020-06-01 14:45:43

Hi

It is in backports. "apt install -t beowulf-backports linux-image-amd64" should do the trick

Have a nice day
Lars H

rolfie · 2020-06-01 14:49:16

How to add backports: give https://devuan.org/os/packages a read.

rolfie

golinux · 2020-06-01 16:12:59

Try https://BETA.devuan.org/os/packages for beowulf

OMG someone pushed it to master! And there are things that still need to be done there!!

ve1drg · 2020-06-02 00:42:39

larsH wrote:

Hi
It is in backports. "apt install -t beowulf-backports linux-image-amd64" should do the trick
Have a nice day
Lars H

Thanks for that direction on kernel location and backports.
Uname -r now shows me 5.5.0-0.bpo.2-amd64.
And it works like a champ. Better than the 4.9.0-11-amd64 version I was running.

Thanks..

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#1 2020-05-20 14:03:50

Beowulf install

#2 2020-05-20 16:50:22

Re: Beowulf install

#3 2020-05-20 19:20:24

Re: Beowulf install

#4 2020-05-20 19:39:48

Re: Beowulf install

#5 2020-05-20 20:15:06

Re: Beowulf install

#6 2020-05-20 23:07:11

Re: Beowulf install

#7 2020-05-20 23:53:18

Re: Beowulf install

#8 2020-05-21 08:10:27

Re: Beowulf install

#9 2020-05-21 09:06:45

Re: Beowulf install

#10 2020-05-21 14:07:19

Re: Beowulf install

#11 2020-05-21 16:13:37

Re: Beowulf install

#12 2020-05-21 16:45:14

Re: Beowulf install

#13 2020-05-23 13:10:54

Re: Beowulf install

#14 2020-05-23 13:59:50

Re: Beowulf install

#15 2020-05-23 15:40:33

Re: Beowulf install

#16 2020-05-23 16:50:11

Re: Beowulf install

#17 2020-05-24 12:25:58

Re: Beowulf install

#18 2020-05-31 23:02:39

Re: Beowulf install

#19 2020-06-01 09:55:16

Re: Beowulf install

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Re: Beowulf install

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Re: Beowulf install

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Re: Beowulf install

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Re: Beowulf install

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