Hang at boot on Dell Inspiron 15

Hang at boot on Dell Inspiron 15

[Demi Marie Obenour]

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I built a Spectrum OS image using
https://github.com/DemiMarie/spectrum/tree/499323fa448406ec728b1f29a4bca6dc54f5df32.
This is almost the same as Spectrum git main, and I am almost
certain that the differences (visible on GitHub) are not related to
this problem.  Therefore, I'm reporting this as if it were a bug in
Spectrum itself.

The bug is pretty simple: on a Dell Inspiron 15, booting freezes
forever.  The last message from the kernel before it stops is:

amdgpu 0000:03:00.0: [drm] fb0: amdgpudrmfb frame buffer device

This machine has an AMD Ryzen 7000 series CPU with integrated
graphics and a 512GB NVMe drive.  The installation ISO was built by

$ nix build --log-format bar-with-logs --file release/combined --out-link "path to Caddy web root"

with a custom config.nix that I can also share if
needed.  It just specifies the update URL and signing
key, though.  The actual install ISO I built can be found at
<https://test-spectrum-updater.devbydemi.com/demi/spectrum-updates/spectrum-installer.iso>
(no authentication needed).  This was built on (and is hosted by)
a test server I don't particularly trust, so don't mount or boot it
on a machine you care about outside of a VM with no GPU acceleration
or other sandbox holes.

To even install Spectrum, I had to kexec from the existing NixOS
install because the firmware wouldn't boot the image off of the
USB stick.  I presume this is a firmware bug, which would not at all
surprise me.

I'm not sure how to go about diagnosing this.  The hang happens after
s6 gets started, but the boot is so fast that it is hard to tell if
it has switched from the initramfs to the rootfs yet.  In any case,
it seems to happen before Weston gets a chance to produce any output
on screen.  Suggestions welcome!
-- 
Sincerely,
Demi Marie Obenour (she/her/hers)

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Re: Hang at boot on Dell Inspiron 15

[Alyssa Ross]

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Demi Marie Obenour <demiobenour@gmail.com> writes:

> I built a Spectrum OS image using
> https://github.com/DemiMarie/spectrum/tree/499323fa448406ec728b1f29a4bca6dc54f5df32.
> This is almost the same as Spectrum git main, and I am almost
> certain that the differences (visible on GitHub) are not related to
> this problem.  Therefore, I'm reporting this as if it were a bug in
> Spectrum itself.
>
> The bug is pretty simple: on a Dell Inspiron 15, booting freezes
> forever.  The last message from the kernel before it stops is:
>
> amdgpu 0000:03:00.0: [drm] fb0: amdgpudrmfb frame buffer device

This is most likely the known issue where we hardcode an assumption that
we should wait for /dev/dri/card0, but on some hardware there's only
/dev/dri/card1, at least by the time we get that far in boot.  Perhaps
you can try replacing card0 with card1 in the sources to confirm.

(This is a very serious issue, of course, but there's apparently an easy
fix for it with COSMIC, and I don't know of one with Weston, so it's
been waiting for the switchover.)

> This machine has an AMD Ryzen 7000 series CPU with integrated
> graphics and a 512GB NVMe drive.  The installation ISO was built by
>
> $ nix build --log-format bar-with-logs --file release/combined --out-link "path to Caddy web root"
>
> with a custom config.nix that I can also share if
> needed.  It just specifies the update URL and signing
> key, though.  The actual install ISO I built can be found at
> <https://test-spectrum-updater.devbydemi.com/demi/spectrum-updates/spectrum-installer.iso>
> (no authentication needed).  This was built on (and is hosted by)
> a test server I don't particularly trust, so don't mount or boot it
> on a machine you care about outside of a VM with no GPU acceleration
> or other sandbox holes.
>
> To even install Spectrum, I had to kexec from the existing NixOS
> install because the firmware wouldn't boot the image off of the
> USB stick.  I presume this is a firmware bug, which would not at all
> surprise me.

Does the live image boot?

> I'm not sure how to go about diagnosing this.  The hang happens after
> s6 gets started, but the boot is so fast that it is hard to tell if
> it has switched from the initramfs to the rootfs yet.  In any case,
> it seems to happen before Weston gets a chance to produce any output
> on screen.  Suggestions welcome!

If it's not the card0/card1 thing, some other debugging tips:

• Did this ever work?  If so, first thing to try should usually be
  bisection.
• You should be able to switch VT in the usual way (Ctrl-Alt-F2).  getty
  is running on tty2, tty3, and tty4.
• You should be able to get a serial getty if you include an appropriate
  console parameter on the kernel command line, which can be edited in
  GRUB.

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Re: Hang at boot on Dell Inspiron 15

[Demi Marie Obenour]

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On 1/10/26 15:58, Alyssa Ross wrote:
> Demi Marie Obenour <demiobenour@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> I built a Spectrum OS image using
>> https://github.com/DemiMarie/spectrum/tree/499323fa448406ec728b1f29a4bca6dc54f5df32.
>> This is almost the same as Spectrum git main, and I am almost
>> certain that the differences (visible on GitHub) are not related to
>> this problem.  Therefore, I'm reporting this as if it were a bug in
>> Spectrum itself.
>>
>> The bug is pretty simple: on a Dell Inspiron 15, booting freezes
>> forever.  The last message from the kernel before it stops is:
>>
>> amdgpu 0000:03:00.0: [drm] fb0: amdgpudrmfb frame buffer device
> 
> This is most likely the known issue where we hardcode an assumption that
> we should wait for /dev/dri/card0, but on some hardware there's only
> /dev/dri/card1, at least by the time we get that far in boot.  Perhaps
> you can try replacing card0 with card1 in the sources to confirm.

I can confirm that this is in fact the problem.  Editing
/run/service/weston/run and passing --drm-device=card1 allows Weston
to start.  I made a bunch of other changes but they should not be
relevant here.

> (This is a very serious issue, of course, but there's apparently an easy
> fix for it with COSMIC, and I don't know of one with Weston, so it's
> been waiting for the switchover.)
> 
>> This machine has an AMD Ryzen 7000 series CPU with integrated
>> graphics and a 512GB NVMe drive.  The installation ISO was built by
>>
>> $ nix build --log-format bar-with-logs --file release/combined --out-link "path to Caddy web root"
>>
>> with a custom config.nix that I can also share if
>> needed.  It just specifies the update URL and signing
>> key, though.  The actual install ISO I built can be found at
>> <https://test-spectrum-updater.devbydemi.com/demi/spectrum-updates/spectrum-installer.iso>
>> (no authentication needed).  This was built on (and is hosted by)
>> a test server I don't particularly trust, so don't mount or boot it
>> on a machine you care about outside of a VM with no GPU acceleration
>> or other sandbox holes.
>>
>> To even install Spectrum, I had to kexec from the existing NixOS
>> install because the firmware wouldn't boot the image off of the
>> USB stick.  I presume this is a firmware bug, which would not at all
>> surprise me.
> 
> Does the live image boot?

I initially installed by booting it with kexec, but fixing the
partition table with fdisk so the backup GPT is at the end allowed
the firmware to boot it.  It seems that the firmware is very picky
about this.

>> I'm not sure how to go about diagnosing this.  The hang happens after
>> s6 gets started, but the boot is so fast that it is hard to tell if
>> it has switched from the initramfs to the rootfs yet.  In any case,
>> it seems to happen before Weston gets a chance to produce any output
>> on screen.  Suggestions welcome!
> 
> If it's not the card0/card1 thing, some other debugging tips:
> 
> • Did this ever work?  If so, first thing to try should usually be
>   bisection.
> • You should be able to switch VT in the usual way (Ctrl-Alt-F2).  getty
>   is running on tty2, tty3, and tty4.

I did that and it really helped.

> • You should be able to get a serial getty if you include an appropriate
>   console parameter on the kernel command line, which can be edited in
>   GRUB.

Most laptops don't have a serial port, so this is (sadly) not very
useful in practice.

Unfortunately, I was not able to use the machine because it only has
Wi-Fi, which isn't supported yet.  Probably not the best machine
for testing :).  I can of course use a USB NIC, but that gives me
networking on the host, not the guest.

Is there a way to run a full Linux distro in the network VM?
Or should I simply replace the hardware with one more suitable
to the task?
-- 
Sincerely,
Demi Marie Obenour (she/her/hers)

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Re: Hang at boot on Dell Inspiron 15

[Alyssa Ross]

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Demi Marie Obenour <demiobenour@gmail.com> writes:

> Unfortunately, I was not able to use the machine because it only has
> Wi-Fi, which isn't supported yet.  Probably not the best machine
> for testing :).  I can of course use a USB NIC, but that gives me
> networking on the host, not the guest.
>
> Is there a way to run a full Linux distro in the network VM?
> Or should I simply replace the hardware with one more suitable
> to the task?

Until we have Wi-Fi, which probably won't be too far away, I'd have
thought you'd be able to get by without networking?  It shouldn't be
necessary to test any other functionality of the system.

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