Problem with booting MSI Cubi after update to 8.1.1/8.1.2

Adam · September 25, 2017 at 8:22 PM

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.

**milhouse** · September 26, 2017 at 8:28 AM

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.

Adam · September 26, 2017 at 4:25 PM

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.

**milhouse** · September 26, 2017 at 4:39 PM

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.

Adam · September 26, 2017 at 4:46 PM

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.

**milhouse** · September 26, 2017 at 5:01 PM

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.

Adam · September 26, 2017 at 5:03 PM

OK - I'm currently testing RAM - I'll get back with answer when it's finished.

Adam · September 26, 2017 at 6:14 PM

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.

Adam · September 26, 2017 at 6:20 PM

**milhouse** · September 26, 2017 at 6:44 PM

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?)

Adam · September 26, 2017 at 6:58 PM

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.

Adam · September 26, 2017 at 7:26 PM

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

Adam · September 26, 2017 at 9:09 PM

Out of curiosity I just installed latest Milhouse 9.0 alpha build:

LibreELEC-Generic.x86_64-9.0-Milhouse-20170925210347-#0925-g6843ee6.tar

And booting problem is gone!

So I guess that this might be kernel version issue, because alpha build uses latest 4.13.3

**milhouse** · September 26, 2017 at 9:32 PM

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...

Adam · September 26, 2017 at 9:46 PM

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

**milhouse** · September 26, 2017 at 10:30 PM

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.

Adam · September 27, 2017 at 6:58 PM

OK - I'll to do that but it will take some time:-)