My Ryzen Linux Adventure. (Kubuntu 18.04)

[MedievalMatt]

I've been having some issues with my recent PC build using Linux.  I wanted to detail my problems and what i have tried to do to resolve the issue (so far, unsuccessfully) in hopes that maybe someone can offer help.  Or on the off-chance that someone else has similar problems they may be able to benefit from my experience.

 

If you are interested, my PC build log has pics of the build in question.

 

I'll start off by saying that i am by no means a Linux "expert" let alone one of the mystical "gurus" out there.  I'm just a guy whose been tooling around for a few years now, and i have a somewhat intermediate level of knowledge.

 

My problem:

 

When i start up my machine, it goes through POST, and will do one of 4 things when starting Linux.

1 - Linux will startup perfectly, no issues

2 - I will get a black screen as the system has hung (its not taking forever, i left it for 48 hours one time)

3 - The kernel log will get to "Switching to AMDGPU from EFI" and get hung

4 - The kernel makes it past the AMDGPU hand-off, and will get hung up on some later step (this varies, I've gotten as far as the login screen before a lockup, or right after the GPU hand-off)

 

My system hardware:

 

CPU - R5 2400G (its worth noting that i am using the SoC on this chip as my display output for 3 displays)

Motherboard - MSI B350m Mortar (with the latest bestest BIOS as of August 2018)

RAM - 32GB of 3000MHz Corsair Vengance LPX

 

Troubleshooting:

 

I am fairly confident is not a Linux install problem, as once the system is loaded, its perfectly stable.  After doing a bunch of research online i was able to determine that the issue likely lies in the MESA drivers for AMD, or the Kernel.

 

Working with this assumption, I first updated to the latest MESA version.  This is constantly being updated and I am on MESA 18.3 at this point.  The issue persists.  I then went about updating the Kernel version.  I started at 4.15 (which is what Kubuntu 18.04 ships with).  I tried 4.17, no dice.  I'm trying every version as it comes out:

4.18 - no

4.18.1 - no

4.18.2 - no

4.18.3 - no

4.18.4 - no

 

I'm still on 4.18.4, and the odds of a successful bootup have increased.  At the start is was about 25% of the time, it would boot up successfully.  I'm up to about 60% now.

 

Given that the issues I'm having are seemingly getting better with kernel updates.  I'm fairly confident that is the issue.  I have also tried enabling and disabling IOMMU in the BIOS, neither option seems to make much difference.

 

The thing that is odd to me is that there are others who i came across in my research that had the same issues I do, and doing one, or all, of the above resolved their issues.  Is this maybe an MSI Motherboard compatibility thing?

 

I will be happy to post anything needed diagnostic wise, though you will have to instruct me on how to go about getting the needed data.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Try a different distro with newer packages like fedora, arch, debian testing. Your running new hardware without good support yet.

[samcool55]

Fedora is a good idea. Wendel uses that a lot so probably for a reason?

[MedievalMatt]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Try a different distro with newer packages like fedora, arch, debian testing. Your running new hardware without good support yet.

Is there anyway that i can use the DE from Kubuntu on those?  I know its 100% possible to take something like Fedora and use a different DE than it ships with, but i have 0 clue how to do that.

 

There are also some apps i use on Kubuntu (ubuntu in general) that im not sure will work on non-debian based distros.

 

I wouldnt think the 2400G falls into the "new" hardware category at this point.  But im honestly not sure what the cycle is between good support and new hardware on linux.

 

That said, I sort of expected some teething issues to start.  But i haven't seen a whole lot related to this specifically.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, MedievalMatt said:

Is there anyway that i can use the DE from Kubuntu on those?  I know its 100% possible to take something like Fedora and use a different DE than it ships with, but i have 0 clue how to do that.

 

There are also some apps i use on Kubuntu (ubuntu in general) that im not sure will work on non-debian based distros.

 

I wouldnt think the 2400G falls into the "new" hardware category at this point.  But im honestly not sure what the cycle is between good support and new hardware on linux.

 

That said, I sort of expected some teething issues to start.  But i haven't seen a whole lot related to this specifically.

Yep almost any large distro like the ones listed will work with kde just fine.

 

2400g is still pretty new in the linux world. esp as things like ubuntu ship with pretty old kernels.

 

[MedievalMatt]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yep almost any large distro like the ones listed will work with kde just fine.

 

2400g is still pretty new in the linux world. esp as things like ubuntu ship with pretty old kernels.

 

I have updated to 4.18.4 which is the most recent, not including 4.19 RC1.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, MedievalMatt said:

I have updated to 4.18.4 which is the most recent, not including 4.19 RC1.

Try a different distro, this seems like a weird bug or anouther old package.

[MedievalMatt]

7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Try a different distro, this seems like a weird bug or anouther old package.

Do Debian Apps work on Fedora?  or is there a comparability layer?  I use an app "KMyMoney" for my finances, and i really like it.  Id hate to switch and lose the use of this app, among others.

 

Also, do you happen to have a guide handy to switch to KDE from the default of Fedora?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, MedievalMatt said:

Do Debian Apps work on Fedora?  or is there a comparability layer?  I use an app "KMyMoney" for my finances, and i really like it.  Id hate to switch and lose the use of this app, among others.

 

Also, do you happen to have a guide handy to switch to KDE from the default of Fedora?

yea that app will work.

 

Just give fedora a try on a extra drive with all updates.

[MedievalMatt]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

yea that app will work.

 

Just give fedora a try on a extra drive with all updates.

Will do, Ive heard a lot of good things about Fedora.

 

any thoughts on how to solve my kubuntu problem though?  Im sure there has to be a way.  If its a bad package.  Clearly there are others that will work.  Im willing to go as far as necessary.

 

Its fun for me to get my hands dirty with this kind of thing.  But ill admit, im a bit outside of my knowledge base, and i know better than to just go running shit in the terminal.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, MedievalMatt said:

any thoughts on how to solve my kubuntu problem though?  Im sure there has to be a way.  If its a bad package.  Clearly there are others that will work.  Im willing to go as far as necessary.

Id try the 18.10 beta.

[Sauron]

Try uninstalling mesa completely, you shouldn't need it if you have amdgpu installed.

[MedievalMatt]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Try uninstalling mesa completely, you shouldn't need it if you have amdgpu installed.

alright, ill give that a try.

 

Everything i had been reading said that AMD GPU support for the ryzen APUs was put in in 4.16.  But i also was reading that some had success with 4.18 and the latest MESA build (was 18.2 at that time).  Which is why i have it.

[Sauron]

14 minutes ago, MedievalMatt said:

alright, ill give that a try.

 

Everything i had been reading said that AMD GPU support for the ryzen APUs was put in in 4.16.  But i also was reading that some had success with 4.18 and the latest MESA build (was 18.2 at that time).  Which is why i have it.

AMDGPU and MESA are two different drivers, mesa is the generic driver that should work with anything, amdgpu is the amd specific open source driver. You should only need amdgpu.

[MedievalMatt]

12 minutes ago, Sauron said:

AMDGPU and MESA are two different drivers, mesa is the generic driver that should work with anything, amdgpu is the amd specific open source driver. You should only need amdgpu.

ah, ok that makes sense.

 

Ill reply here once i uninstall and test a bit.  Im at work right now.  

[vsteel]

If you think it could possibly be other packages you can enable backports which will enable most all of the packages that will be in 18.10

[MedievalMatt]

Update - So i uninstalled MESA and it looks like my odds of a sucessful boot have improved.

 

I loaded up a VM for Fedora to test out.  I want to make sure it will work for my use case before switching.

 

Id say im up to ~80% boot-up rate.

[Filthyscum]

On 8/28/2018 at 8:30 PM, MedievalMatt said:

Do Debian Apps work on Fedora?  or is there a comparability layer?  I use an app "KMyMoney" for my finances, and i really like it.  Id hate to switch and lose the use of this app, among others.

 

Also, do you happen to have a guide handy to switch to KDE from the default of Fedora?

Fedora has a KDE spin, so just download that

[wasab]

On 8/28/2018 at 2:10 PM, MedievalMatt said:

I've been having some issues with my recent PC build using Linux.  I wanted to detail my problems and what i have tried to do to resolve the issue (so far, unsuccessfully) in hopes that maybe someone can offer help.  Or on the off-chance that someone else has similar problems they may be able to benefit from my experience.

 

If you are interested, my PC build log has pics of the build in question.

 

I'll start off by saying that i am by no means a Linux "expert" let alone one of the mystical "gurus" out there.  I'm just a guy whose been tooling around for a few years now, and i have a somewhat intermediate level of knowledge.

 

My problem:

 

When i start up my machine, it goes through POST, and will do one of 4 things when starting Linux.

1 - Linux will startup perfectly, no issues

2 - I will get a black screen as the system has hung (its not taking forever, i left it for 48 hours one time)

3 - The kernel log will get to "Switching to AMDGPU from EFI" and get hung

4 - The kernel makes it past the AMDGPU hand-off, and will get hung up on some later step (this varies, I've gotten as far as the login screen before a lockup, or right after the GPU hand-off)

 

My system hardware:

 

CPU - R5 2400G (its worth noting that i am using the SoC on this chip as my display output for 3 displays)

Motherboard - MSI B350m Mortar (with the latest bestest BIOS as of August 2018)

RAM - 32GB of 3000MHz Corsair Vengance LPX

 

Troubleshooting:

 

I am fairly confident is not a Linux install problem, as once the system is loaded, its perfectly stable.  After doing a bunch of research online i was able to determine that the issue likely lies in the MESA drivers for AMD, or the Kernel.

 

Working with this assumption, I first updated to the latest MESA version.  This is constantly being updated and I am on MESA 18.3 at this point.  The issue persists.  I then went about updating the Kernel version.  I started at 4.15 (which is what Kubuntu 18.04 ships with).  I tried 4.17, no dice.  I'm trying every version as it comes out:

4.18 - no

4.18.1 - no

4.18.2 - no

4.18.3 - no

4.18.4 - no

 

I'm still on 4.18.4, and the odds of a successful bootup have increased.  At the start is was about 25% of the time, it would boot up successfully.  I'm up to about 60% now.

 

Given that the issues I'm having are seemingly getting better with kernel updates.  I'm fairly confident that is the issue.  I have also tried enabling and disabling IOMMU in the BIOS, neither option seems to make much difference.

 

The thing that is odd to me is that there are others who i came across in my research that had the same issues I do, and doing one, or all, of the above resolved their issues.  Is this maybe an MSI Motherboard compatibility thing?

 

I will be happy to post anything needed diagnostic wise, though you will have to instruct me on how to go about getting the needed data.

Is there an operating system already install on your machine? Remove all the drivers for your graphics card and try again. 

E.g. go to driver manager on Windows(if that's what you are running) and completely remove amd Radeon driver so it is the gerneric display driver left.

[MedievalMatt]

1 hour ago, wasab said:

Is there an operating system already install on your machine? Remove all the drivers for your graphics card and try again. 

E.g. go to driver manager on Windows(if that's what you are running) and completely remove amd Radeon driver so it is the gerneric display driver left.

Linux....not windows....only Linux.  i use windows on my Gaming PC.  Im talking about my Daily Driver, which is Linux.

 

I seem to be having reasonable success after uninstalling MESA and on Kernel 4.18.5.  its about 85% success rate.

 

I will be switching to Fedora 28 this weekend, or later next week as that has been suggested.  Ive spun up a VM and it looks like i can get everything i need running.

[wasab]

On 8/28/2018 at 4:58 PM, MedievalMatt said:

ah, ok that makes sense.

 

Ill reply here once i uninstall and test a bit.  Im at work right now.  

no, thats misinformation.

AMDGPU is the go to open source driver that is used in mesa. its code base has a lot of contributions from the amd engineers who then use that same driver and add a proprietary layer on it then renaming it amd-gpu pro, which is what you will find if you download from amd's official website for linux. think of it like chromium vs chrome. the former is open source version which the latter proprietary version gets its sourced code from. For this reason, it is recommended that you stick with the open sourced driver. the performance is roughly the same if not better than amdgpu pro 

 

Mesa is directly built into the linux kernel and so is the amd gpu driver that it relies on. You shouldnt uninstall mesa, just downgrade to a lower tier kernel. 

 

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AMDGPU-Driver

 

note amdgpu is for modern amd GCN video cards. older amd video cards use different drivers. 

 

[jde3]

MESA is an opensource OpenGL implementation for 3d rendering. It's an API not a driver. It is NOT part of the Linux kernel. It has nothing to do with your system being able to boot. (at least into console mode, it only affects graphics modes) It's like Vulkan or DirectX.

 

@MedievalMatt This sounds like the old classic KMS problem try adding nomodeset to your Linux boot line. (in grub hover the kernel you'd like to boot and press E to go into edit mode, find the line starting with the words kernel and append nomodeset to the end and try booting it.

 

You can also try the option radeon.modeset=0 or you can try amd_iommu=on

[MedievalMatt]

On 9/1/2018 at 3:47 AM, jde3 said:

MESA is an opensource OpenGL implementation for 3d rendering. It's an API not a driver. It is NOT part of the Linux kernel. It has nothing to do with your system being able to boot. (at least into console mode, it only affects graphics modes) It's like Vulkan or DirectX.

 

@MedievalMatt This sounds like the old classic KMS problem try adding nomodeset to your Linux boot line. (in grub hover the kernel you'd like to boot and press E to go into edit mode, find the line starting with the words kernel and append nomodeset to the end and try booting it.

 

You can also try the option radeon.modeset=0 or you can try amd_iommu=on

I will be trying the nomodeset part of this next time i Boot.

 

I switched to Fedora 28, which is on Kernel 4.17.9 (or something similar) and it is much much better, but still i run into the same problems i had with Kubuntu.

 

Are you able to explain what nomodeset does exactly?

[jde3]

4 hours ago, MedievalMatt said:

I will be trying the nomodeset part of this next time i Boot.

 

I switched to Fedora 28, which is on Kernel 4.17.9 (or something similar) and it is much much better, but still i run into the same problems i had with Kubuntu.

 

Are you able to explain what nomodeset does exactly?

It just prevents the console from going into a high res vesa mode. Some video cards fail to choose the proper mode automatically on boot leaving you with a blank console. This does not have anything to do with X or Wayland, this is just for the console (text based), X will later set your graphics mode with whatever driver it determines is best. AMDGPU or Radeon driver.

[MedievalMatt]

10 minutes ago, jde3 said:

It just prevents the console from going into a high res vesa mode. Some video cards fail to choose the proper mode automatically on boot leaving you with a blank console. This does not have anything to do with X or Wayland, this is just for the console (text based), X will later set your graphics mode with whatever driver it determines is best. AMDGPU or Radeon driver.

I think i noted before, but im using the iGPU, not a discrete card.  Since all i need is triple displays and im not doing anything more demanding than Steam in-home streaming.  it is more than sufficient.

 

I tried nomodeset, and this result in a successful boot, yes, but it was super low res, and only one of my three displays actually got signal.

 

The other two, AMD_IOMMU and AMDMODESET both yielded failed boots.  Black screens.