Problem with booting MSI Cubi after update to 8.1.1/8.1.2

    Afer update to 8.1.1 I have problem with booting my msi cubi 2 (kaby lake u) – sometimes I need to cycle power on/off few times to boot, otherwise IT freezes on msi boot logo, without any message. When it finally boots, it works flawlessly – stable and fast, including hardware hevc decompression. Fresh installation of 8.1.1 didn't help. Update to 8.1.2 doesn't change this behaviour either. Reverting back to 8.0.2 resolves booting problem completely.

    Does it still respond to pings when "frozen" at the MSI boot logo?

    If so, see if you can connect with ssh (username: root, password: libreelec) and run "journalctl | pastebinit" and paste the url. You should also check to see if you have any crashlogs and upload the most recent ("cat /storage/.kodi/temp/kodi_crash.log | pastebinit").

    If no response to pings, then try removing "quiet" from the kernel command line (in one of your syslinux.cfg, probably /flash/EFI/BOOT/syslinux.cfg if booting with UEFI) and see if it always hangs at the same point.

    It doesn't respond to ping - it doesn't get to the point of network initiation.

    I checked before and now and there in no kodi_crash.log.

    I removed quiet and after reboot it shows only "Loading /KERNEL...OK" and that's it - it doesn't go any further.

    Can you check you have the latest BIOS, also run a hardware check on your system, eg. memtest86+ to make sure you haven't got a bad memory stick - the last two "failure to boot" reports I'm aware of turned out to be bad RAM.

    OK - i'll check. But it would be very strange, because when it runs it's rock stable and with bad memory stick it would be almost impossible.

    There are two memory sticks installed in my CUBI, so I can check if removing/swaping one of them makes difference.

    Using 8.0.2 or Windows 10 - no problems - boots in 100% cases.

    Quote from Adam

    OK - i'll check. But it would be very strange, because when it runs it's rock stable and with bad memory stick it would be almost impossible.

    There are two memory sticks installed in my CUBI, so I can check if removing/swaping one of them makes difference.

    Using 8.0.2 or Windows 10 - no problems - boots in 100% cases.

    You'd think that, but see this thread where 8.0.2 booted fine, but 8.1.0 did not, and memtest86+ revealed a bad memory stick, the replacement of which resolved the issue.


    It's possible the newer 4.11.12 kernel in 8.1.0 tests or otherwise utilises more memory than the 4.9.29 kernel in 8.0.2, and sometimes hits a bad address.

    Unfortunately, it won't be as easy as bad memory module - error count 0.

    I also checked booting with single module - both of them in both memory slots - no change.

    And there's no fresher BIOS version available from MSI than mine.

    Not really sure what the problem is, in that case, although I'd recommend testing for at least 2-3 passes considering this appears to be an intermittent issue.

    Which model of CUBI is this (CPU, GPU etc.)? I do recall an issue with MSI motherboards and Radeon GPUs but I guess that isn't likely to be a factor in this situation (most likely on-board Intel GPU?)

    Second pass of memtest also 0 errors - i think it's not that issue.

    It's MSI Cubi 2-024BEU with Intel Penium 4415U (Kaby Lake U family) with Intel HD Graphics 610.

    I also created a ticket to MSI support but they weren't helpful at all, stating that they only certify and test this hardware with windows 10 and they do not provide any help for linux users, so if problem is not replicable on windows environment, then you're on your own :(

    I guess so, however we didn't see any KBL boot issue while testing the 4.11.y kernel in my builds throughout May-July so it's surprising to find an issue now.

    We have been using 4.11.y in all of these 8.1.x betas and yours is the first reported Kaby Lake booting issue (that I'm aware of) so hopefully this isn't going to be a widespread problem...

    Maybe it's only a problem with Pentium Kaby Lake? - there's not much of them. Or maybe it's only MSI CUBI 2 specific. I'm curious if anyone is using 8.1.x LE on Kaby Lake based MSI CUBI with i3 or i5 CPU without problems.

    So for now I'm staying with alpha - I'll wait for kernel update in official release :)

    Since 4.9.y appears to work OK, and the problem is there with 4.11.12, it might be worth trying some of the 4.9.y-4.11.12 builds in my test thread to narrow down when the issue started. I announce each new kernel in the summary so it should be possible to find each build with a new kernel.

    Start with 4.11.10 (the last 4.11.y kernel before switching to 4.12.y) as that may give you the same problem. Then test 4.11.0 and if that works OK then try the later 4.11.y kernels to determine which is the first problem kernel.

    If 4.11.0 has the problem, then test 4.10.y. If the 4.10.y kernels don't have the problem then try the 4.11 release candidates (there were 5 in total).

    Once we know when the problem started then we can review what changed in the build and maybe even pin it down to a specific commit.