Booting the live ISO from a USB stick, the last four lines are:
Starting NTP client/server
Starting GNOME Display Manager
Started GNOME Display Manager
Started NTP client/server
Then the screen sort of flashes none of the text is changing but briefly disappears before reappearing.
Rokcky 8.10 live booted fine from a USB, but before I decide what to install thought I’d give 9.5 a try.
Any suggestion on how I might get beyond that, maybe something to add to the boot command?
The motherboard is Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 REV1.2 and an AMD processor FD8350FRW8KHK. I did check using Rocky 8.10 that it met the requirements for Rocky 9.
The virtual consoles seem to work (in that switching them either shows the boot process on console 1 or all the others are initially blank). I kept switching between them as the boot process ran. Console 1 (ctril+alt+F1) always showed the boot process, all others were blank.
Once it reached the stuck point as described in my post #1, all consoles from 2 to 6 display “localhose-live login:”. But switching to them only remains briefly and it was quickly switching back to console 1. Eventually Console 1 has ended up blank (and 2-5 with the login message).
I took some photos of the boot process in both Rocky 8.10 and 9.5 and observed the following during live boot of 9.5:
Lots of: ACPI Error AE_NOT_FOUND while resolving a named reference packahe element LNKA (or LNKB, LNKC, LNKD on different lines)
Unmaintained driver ip_set
Warning: Deprecated driver is detected - will not be maintained in a future major release and may be disabled for the following:
• qla4xxx
• cnic
• bnx2i
dracut-pre-pivot[991] /etc/multipath.conf does not exist, blacklisting all devices
On 8.10, the ACPI errors and missing multipath.conf also occur but not the driver errors. I think the messages are just warnings (more that they will not be present in some future release). But are any of those an issue?
So I’ve asked ChatGPT if your CPU understands all x86_v2 instructuons. Here’s the answer:
No, the AMD FX-8350 processor (model FD8350FRW8KHK) does not fully support the x86-64-v2 instruction set. While it does support many of the features included in x86-64-v2—such as SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, POPCNT, CMPXCHG16B, and LAHF/SAHF—it lacks support for the MOVBE (Move with Byte Swap) instruction, which is a requirement for full x86-64-v2 compliance.
You can double check on this, but this seems to be the issue here.
Thanks. I did check using the info at Test CPU compatibility - Documentation and the output was exactly as presented, in particular the requirement for ```
x86-64-v2 (supported, searched)
I have now downloaded the full ISO and installed 9.5. I got a warning on installing that it could not start the x-server but it offered VNC so I setup the installation from another PC.
9.5 installed but when rebooted has no graphical interface and running startx gives errors. I have managed to install VNC and so I can now control the machine remotely (it’s destined to be a CCTV server and doesn’t strictly need a GUI but it would be nice if it did have to make it easier to manage if there is ever an issue with remote access).
Observations:
Rocky 8.10 could manage no higher resolution than 800x600
Rocky 9.5 /var/log/Xorg.0.log contains the following signficant errors after running startx:
(EE) Failed to load module “s3” (module does not exist, 0)
(EE) Failed to load module “vesa” (module does not exist, 0)
(EE) open /dev/dri/card0: No such file or directory
(EE) open /dev/fb0: No such file or directory
(EE) No devices detected.
(EE) no screens found(EE)
The graphics card is (very) old - a Diamond Stealth 64 Video 2001 and from lspci: VGA compatible controller [0300]: S3 Graphics Ltd. 86c764/765 [Trio32/64/64V+] [5333:8811] (rev 53).
I suspect that this is behind the reason for the live CD not booting to a GUI.
Do I need to identify a driver to install (I’ve done some searches but not come up with an answer) or is the card fundamentally too old?
I have checked the RHEL9 hardware page and it doesn’t mention anything that appears to be removing this driver.
X.Org X11 video drivers have been replaced by modesetting
The following X.Org X11 video drivers have been removed and replaced by the generic modesetting driver:
xorg-x11-drv-ati
xorg-x11-drv-intel
xorg-x11-drv-nouveau
xorg-x11-drv-qxl
xorg-x11-drv-vesa
GPUs supported by RHEL now automatically use the modesetting driver.
If you apply a custom X.Org configuration for any of the removed drivers in RHEL 8 or earlier, your configuration will have no effect in RHEL 9. Before upgrading to RHEL 9, check your X.Org configuration files and directories, such as /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/.
Asking Mr. Google about “linux modesetting driver” gives lots of results so you might want to read up on that.
So I fitted an Nvdia NVS440 video card. The system then booted to a GUI, but… No network (could not ping from another PC), no keyboard (numlock changes the light but no other keys), no mouse (illuminated but cursor does not move). That meant I couldn’t interact in any way.
Refitted original video card and can’t see anything obvious in the messages log - I can see the USB devices being enumerated and the network being successfully sarted (link connected) and the Nvida card is detected - appears to be using nouveau driver.
I haven’t installed Nvidia drivers - that was going to be the next step once I’d logged in.