EFI boot problem in 3.11

EFI boot problem in 3.11

[Jasper Bryant-Greene]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1241 bytes --]

I have a box here which is set up for EFI boot with no boot loader.

The kernel is compiled with a built-in initrd and command line.

In 3.10 this was all working well. However, after updating to 3.11.5 a reboot leads to the EFI firmware boot screen appearing followed by the middle section of it going black (just leaving two vertical stripes of the EFI firmware boot screen on either side of the screen) and the system locking up (numlock etc do not work).

However, if I hit ‘delete’ quickly when powering on, and enter the firmware setup screen, I can then ‘exit without saving’ and the system will boot successfully — ‘save and exit’ does not work as that performs a full reboot while ‘exit without saving’ seems to continue the boot where it left off.

Due to the aforementioned graphics corruption, I am wondering whether it is somehow related to the frame buffer? As this is a production system I unfortunately do not have flexibility to try a number of kernel versions in-between to locate where the issue was introduced.

All enabled .config options in the graphics section are: FB, FB_EFI, VGA_ARB, LOGO, LOGO_LINUX_CLUT224, VGA_CONSOLE, FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE

Please Cc me in replies.

Best,
Jasper Bryant-Greene


[-- Attachment #2: smime.p7s --]
[-- Type: application/pkcs7-signature, Size: 1888 bytes --]

Re: EFI boot problem in 3.11

[Matt Fleming]

On Thu, 24 Oct, at 12:14:26PM, Jasper Bryant-Greene wrote:
> I have a box here which is set up for EFI boot with no boot loader.
> 
> The kernel is compiled with a built-in initrd and command line.
> 
> In 3.10 this was all working well. However, after updating to 3.11.5 a
> reboot leads to the EFI firmware boot screen appearing followed by the
> middle section of it going black (just leaving two vertical stripes of
> the EFI firmware boot screen on either side of the screen) and the
> system locking up (numlock etc do not work).
> 
> However, if I hit ‘delete’ quickly when powering on, and enter the
> firmware setup screen, I can then ‘exit without saving’ and the system
> will boot successfully — ‘save and exit’ does not work as that
> performs a full reboot while ‘exit without saving’ seems to continue
> the boot where it left off.
> 
> Due to the aforementioned graphics corruption, I am wondering whether
> it is somehow related to the frame buffer? As this is a production
> system I unfortunately do not have flexibility to try a number of
> kernel versions in-between to locate where the issue was introduced.

Nothing springs to mind and nothing jumps out of the log in
drivers/video or arch/x86/platform/efi.

The best way to figure out what's causing this issue really is to bisect
the kernel versions. What hardware are you running on?

-- 
Matt Fleming, Intel Open Source Technology Center