Re: [Tails-testers] Unusable on devices with AMD Vega Mobile…

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Author: intrigeri
Date:  
To: Rangan Das, tails-testers\@boum.org
Subject: Re: [Tails-testers] Unusable on devices with AMD Vega Mobile GPUs
Hi,

Rangan Das:
> After multiple attempts, I could not get Whisperback to work.
> The system would freeze or the screen would glitch out completely.
> It is completely unusable after it connects to the internet.
> The errors are different each time. Here are some of the things that
> usually happen:


> N.B. I am using Legacy Boot Mode, secure boot disabled, BIOS version
> 1.3.2 on Dell Inspiron 5575. I have tried using different flash
> drives, different USB ports. When using UEFI, after boot, I get only
> a grey screen. I will keep trying to send a WhisperBack report
> though. In that case, you will actually get the technical info.


> During boot, I get this message:
>     [    6.020547] pci 0000:00:00.2: AMD-Vi: Unable to write to IOMMU perf counter.
>     [    6.911935] kfd kfd: Failed to resume IOMMU for device 1002:15dd
>     [    6.912393] kfd kfd: device 1002:15dd NOT added use to errors
> After this, I get the GUI boot screen with three dots and I boot into Tails normally.
> Once I get the following message:
>     [    6.148248] pci 0000:00:00.2: AMD-Vi: Unable to write to IOMMU perf counter.
>     [    6.501945] i2c_designware AMDI0010:01: Unknown Synopsys component type: 0xffffffff
> The system got stuck here and it failed to boot. I had to Ctrl+Alt+Del out of here. 


This looks like a kernel problem to me. It would be great if you could
retry with a more recent nightly build from our "devel" branch, that
has an updated Linux kernel with tons of improvements for AMD
graphics:

https://nightly.tails.boum.org/build_Tails_ISO_devel/lastSuccessful/archive/build-artifacts/

And wrt. the UEFI problem, I'd like you to retry booting in UEFI mode,
with Secure Boot disabled, with a USB image (.img) that has GRUB
instead of syslinux:

https://nightly.tails.boum.org/build_Tails_ISO_feature-6560-secure-boot/lastSuccessful/archive/build-artifacts/

> Also, is there any way to dump all the debug info on the flash drive
> itself which I can upload from a different OS for you to check?


Yes. You could:

1. Add "rootpw=somepassword" on the kernel command line in the boot
loader

2. Once Tails has started, switch to a text console with CTRL+ALT+F3

3. Log in as root with the "somepassword" password.

4. run tails-debugging-info > /tmp/debugging-info

5. mount another USB stick and copy /tmp/debugging-info there

Cheers,
--
intrigeri