Hullo there,
I've been having a bit of a battle with trying to persuade a new motherboard to see a debian bootloader. The machine is a mini-ITX with 1 SATA drive, the new motherboard is a GIGABYTE GA-J1800N-D2H, I have a pxe netboot debian set up which the BIOS doesn't detect, a USB stick set up with the image from here: http://grml.org/, and the already-installed SATA drive running debian wheezy/grub. All I get is either a black screen after the motherboard logo, or the logo keeps reappearing as if it were constantly rebooting.
The support at mini-ITX say they have booted ubuntu successfully from a USB stick running Ubuntu (video to support this shown here: http://www17.zippyshare.com/v/84742025/file.html).
I found various comments on amazon about this board and linux, saying the BIOS has to be upgraded, but the mini-ITX support reckon the board already is running version 4. Now, they could be wrong and I need to upgrade BIOS to see my humble boot offerings, but I wondered if maybe there was something else about debian that is too out-dated for this board? If so, the board is of no use and I need to return it rather than wasting time piddling about with trying to upgrade the BIOS.
I suppose my question is: if anyone can say yes, debian won't work whatever you do at the moment, then I'll know not to waste further time.
Unfortunately I have to replace the old board into my client's machine each time I try and fail miserably to make it work, so it isn't currently plugged in and running to inspect the BIOS version... I did try every combination of boot order, CSM settings though.
Hardware, *sigh*.
Thanks,
Jenny
Unfortunately I have to replace the old board into my client's machine each time I try and fail miserably to make it work, so it isn't currently plugged in and running to inspect the BIOS version... I did try every combination of boot order, CSM settings though.
I'd be grabbing an ATX power supply, splatting the board on something non-conductive and spinning it up to test *before* putting it in to the clients machine. That way you can test things easier *without* taking the current box offline or going to site to do it, and work out what's going on.
Also, check that you've actually got the ethernet boot rom enabled to allow PXE booting.
Thanks,
On 15 July 2014 11:06, Brett Parker iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk wrote:
Unfortunately I have to replace the old board into my client's machine each time I try and fail miserably to make it work, so it isn't currently plugged in and running to inspect the BIOS version... I did try every combination of boot order, CSM settings though.
I'd be grabbing an ATX power supply, splatting the board on something non-conductive and spinning it up to test *before* putting it in to the clients machine. That way you can test things easier *without* taking the current box offline or going to site to do it, and work out what's going on.
This was a splendid idea, and I've had the client go and inspect an even older mini-ITX machine that he used to run. It only has a 20-way molex, though, whereas the new board requires a 24-way (or 20-way + 4-way) AND a 12V 4-way. I suppose an ATX power supply is non-standard? I can't just use one that is laying about here?
Also, check that you've actually got the ethernet boot rom enabled to allow PXE booting.
OK, noted for when I do get it powered up.
Thanks,
Jenny
On 15 July 2014 14:13, Jenny Hopkins hopkins.jenny@gmail.com wrote:
On 15 July 2014 11:06, Brett Parker iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk wrote:
Unfortunately I have to replace the old board into my client's machine each time I try and fail miserably to make it work, so it isn't currently plugged in and running to inspect the BIOS version... I did try every combination of boot order, CSM settings though.
I'd be grabbing an ATX power supply, splatting the board on something non-conductive and spinning it up to test *before* putting it in to the clients machine. That way you can test things easier *without* taking the current box offline or going to site to do it, and work out what's going on.
This was a splendid idea, and I've had the client go and inspect an even older mini-ITX machine that he used to run. It only has a 20-way molex, though, whereas the new board requires a 24-way (or 20-way + 4-way) AND a 12V 4-way. I suppose an ATX power supply is non-standard? I can't just use one that is laying about here?
Also, check that you've actually got the ethernet boot rom enabled to allow PXE booting.
OK, noted for when I do get it powered up.
Got a bit further on this: It appears that debian stable won't work with this board unless I do trickery as suggest here - http://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article51/debian-efi. We've decided ubuntu will do instead, it's not that important to the client. I've got a working test set-up going now here, thanks Brett, and have confirmed that the BIOS is still on F2. I downloaded the files for upgrading to F4, and created a USB FreeDOS stick to flash with, using debian and uNetBootin (after formatting drive to FAT32)(debian stable laptop boots up from it OK) . Once again, the board simply won't boot from the stick, even with all the cms and legacy support enabled and secure boot disabled.
Once again, I'm wondering if creating the FreeDOS from debian stable could be the problem, or should that not matter? I'm at a lack of windows machines here to create one using rufus, as the vendor suggests.
Any ideas, anyone?
Thanks,
Jenny
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Brett Parker -
Jenny Hopkins