I'm trying to extend the life of an old computer stuck in Win7, by installing latest Zorin OS after fully wiped-out HDD from previous OS/data.
I choosed to install 'swap', 'EFI', '/' paritions on first HDD (respectively 32 GB, 8 GB and ~420 GB) and '/home' on second HDD (465 GB).
I selected "yes install 3rd-party proprietary softwares".
The installation processed with no error messages, except a repeated warning at the begining saying "radeon: The kernel rejected CS, see dmesg for more information.".
After that, booting computer shows a Zorin breathing logo, followed by "ZORIN", then on the screen where I suppose it should be the login screen, I got a black screen, with only the mouse pointer visible, reacting properly. After 30 sec of inactivity, the monitor goes to sleep. Keyboard & mouse wake-up the black screen.
Computer specs are:
MB Gigabyte GA-A55M-S2HP-rev1.0 (2013 BIOS, no UEFI)
CPU AMD A4-3400 APU with Radeon HD graphics (ID 300F10)
RAM 8 GB DDR3-1600MHz (4*2 GB) @EOCP DDR1600 @ 1.6V (both memtest86 & memtest86+ passed)
HDD 2x Samsung HD502HJ 500GB (full surface scans passed with ESTOOL after 3-pass full wiping)
Here is additional info I can think about:
I tried installation with HDD configured as AHCI or legacy IDE in BIOS settings, no changes.
Both install and operating is done with no LAN connected (neither Wifi chip)
CPU temp is cool (<30°C)
Same issue whatever after a cold boot or a restart
Could someone help me to understand and fix this issue ?
What tool did you use to create the Bootstick? If it was Rufus, did You choose on the ''Partition Sheme'' Option MBR for Your non-UEFI BIOS? Are Secure Boot and Fast Boot in BIOS disabled?
I used Rufus, yes, using MBR and "BIOS or UEFI" in destination system. In this old motherboard there is neither secure boot nor fast boot, so I consider they are disabled. I just updated the BIOS to the latest version (F5-2012), and retry using default settings instead of configuring partition table.
I already tested with factory defaults settings in BIOS, no evolution.
I was wondering the same question, but if I remove this partition in custom partition table, the installer shows a warning alert saying the OS will probably don't boot. I keep you informed about my various attempts.
The installer tool always shows this message when users try to install Zorin on old machines with legacy BIOS. It is probably made for UEFI, but nevertheless works on BIOS.
Is there a way to get the installation log at the end of installation process (before rebooting), in order to dig in and try to found any error message that could occurs ?
enabling / disabling virtualization in BIOS, then reinstall Zorin
setting IDE mode or AHCI mode for SATA controller, then reinstall Zorin
disabling RAM profile (fallback to 1333 MHz instead of 1600 MHz), then reinstall Zorin
enabling / disabling 3rd-party softwares including proprietary ones
using default settings for HDD formating
using custom partiton table with and without creating EFI partition
using custom partiton table with and without creating swap partition
using HDD2 (/dev/sdb) instead of HDD1 (/dev/sda)
When I boot on live USB prior to install, I got some following error messages in dmesg:
Errors
Around 30 times this one : "radeon 0000:00:01.0: ring 0 stalled for more than 19726msec" (with variable delay)
Then 30 seconds after : "[drm:r600ib_test [radeon]] ERROR radeon: fence wait timed out"
followed by "[drm:radeon_ib_ring_tests]" [radeon] ERROR radeon: failed testing IB on GFX ring (-110)."
But despite those errors, live desktop works nicely.
When I'm on the installed OS, on the black login screen, if I press CTRL+ALT+F3 to open a terminal session, I can login successfully, and dmesg shows the same errors as above in live version.
It clearly seems a graphic driver issue. I'll try to dig-in this way but I'm probably not enough linux-skilled to understand what I could do now.
My monitor is a 1920x1080 connected via VGA directly to the motherboard's VGA output from AMD APU.
No graphic card is installed.
lspci | grep VGA : 00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Sumo [Radeon HD 6410D]
I tried ZorinOS core 15.3, 16.3, 17.3:
live boot have same issues when starting default option in grub
if I select "safe graphics" options, I got some error logs below, then the Welcome screen with Try or Install button show but in 640x480 so I only see 2/3 of the screen, making it unusable even for installation.
Logs seen:
ACPI Error: AE_NOT_FOUND, While resolving a named reference package element - LNKA (20190816/dspkginit-440)
ACPI Error: AE_NOT_FOUND, While resolving a named reference package element - LNKB (20190816/dspkginit-440)
ACPI Error: AE_NOT_FOUND, While resolving a named reference package element - LNKC (20190816/dspkginit-440)
ACPI Error: AE_NOT_FOUND, While resolving a named reference package element - LNKD (20190816/dspkginit-440)
[drm:radeon_init [radeon]] ERROR No UMS support in radeon module!
Since chatGPT said (I didn't cross checked this info) that VGA could worsen the situation of a driver not really tested/validaded (I don't catch why, I consider VGA like the latest technical solution that could "crash" when all others could fails), I used a DVI-D cable to connect the monitor. No change.
After several hours on it, I finally decided to plug an old PCIe GPU (GTX 1050 Ti), and it worked perfectly at first boot.
Since even ZorinOS 15.3 is based on Ubuntu-18.04, I think that my really old GPU is unfortunately not correctly supported or stable. I can see in this webpage AMD SuperSumo [Radeon HD 6410D] that the radeon driver should be supported but in fine it's not functional.