Can install 9.0 but not 9.1 from USB drive

Infrastructure
21

There have been some sporadic issues with AMD GPU’s needing kernel parameters added such as iommu=soft or iommu=pt. There are other iommu settings that might be tried but those are the two that come up most recently.

22

Thanks! I will give those options a try.

23

There have been some big changes in the AMD graphics stack starting with 9.1, which most people will want, but it’s possible they have not taken older cards into account. Windows 11 has similar changes and the card (Cedar GL) is unlikely to work.

1 Like
24

Tried the two options. No luck.

25

I/m following your post “Dnf upgrade from 9.0 to 9.1 failed” under General. Interesting.

26

Yes, at first I thought it might be related, as I’m using AMD graphics, but I don’t actually know what caused the upgrade of the kernel to fail, nor why it was fixed by re-installing the failed kernel.

27

Are you using a discrete video card? It so, which one?

I’m still getting the same kernel panic after I followed the 9.1 installation method discussed in Dnf upgrade from 9.0 to 9.1 failed

28

Solved

Realizing that, since I only need the graphics card for text mode console output, I don’t really need the amdgpu driver and I could blacklist it so it is never loaded at boot time.

I would like to thank all who participated in this discussion.

Checking that the solution works

Booted the problematic 9.1 option adding the option “modprobe.blacklist=amdgpu” which worked.

Making the change permanent

Jailed amdgpu:

# echo "blacklist amdgpu" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

This change must be propagated to the correct initramfs .img file in /boot which, in this case, is the RL 9.1 image

/boot/initramfs-5.14.0-162.6.1.el9_1.0.1.x86_64.img

For safety I backed it up

# cp -p initramfs-5.14.0-162.6.1.el9_1.0.1.x86_64.img \
        initramfs-5.14.0-162.6.1.el9_1.0.1.x86_64.img.BAK

At this point I rebuilt the image

# dracut -f /boot/initramfs-5.14.0-162.6.1.el9_1.0.1.x86_64.img \
                            5.14.0-162.6.1.el9_1.0.1.x86_64

RL9.1 now boots fine!

1 Like
29

PS

It is not necessary to go the “RL9.0 upgrade to 9.1” route. Just add the "modprobe.blacklist=amdgpu” option when booting the RL9.1 USB iso and simply blacklist the amdgpu driver as shown previously without worrying about recreating the initramfs.

Rocky includes two AMD drivers in the distribution: “amdgpu” and “radeon”. When amdgpu is blacklinstd, the radeon driver is used.

PS #2

To verify which video drivers are actually used in my machine (which also includes an Nvidia card) I used the lshw command:

# lshw -c video
  *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: GP107GL [Quadro P620]
       vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
       version: a1
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=nouveau latency=0
       resources: irq:103 memory:fb000000-fbffffff memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:e0000000-e1ffffff ioport:e000(size=128) memory:fc000000-fc07ffff
  *-display:0
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: RV370 [Radeon X300]
       vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:09:00.0
       logical name: /dev/fb0
       version: 00
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom fb
       configuration: depth=32 driver=radeon latency=0 resolution=1920,1080
       resources: irq:102 memory:e8000000-efffffff ioport:f000(size=256) memory:fcc30000-fcc3ffff memory:c0000-dffff
  *-display:1 UNCLAIMED
       description: Display controller
       product: RV370 [Radeon X300 SE]
       vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
       physical id: 0.1
       bus info: pci@0000:09:00.1
       version: 00
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress cap_list
       configuration: latency=0
       resources: memory:fcc20000-fcc2ffff
30

I don’t remember you saying anything about an NVidia card in the previous posts?

31

I mentioned it back in #15. I unplugged for most tests.