Tried to install Nixos for the first time..

Sunny' 🌻@slrpnk.net to Linux@lemmy.ml – 113 points –

Hi.

Tried to install nix but am stuck with an issue I'm not able to resolve. Whenever I boot the system, it uses approx 5min on the boot-up of Nixos Stage #1 as seen in the picture. After a while it will boot into the system but without a GUI. I've done the installation twice, with different isos to make sure I didn't do it wrong. It only works if I downgrade to nixos 23.11, but if I update(+plasma 6) from there It results in the same problem.

The error is:

kernel: Acpi Error: Aborting method (long string) due to previous error (AE_AML_UNINITIALIZED_ELEMENT)

Have no idea what this error is, and there don't seem to be alot of info on it. Reaching out here to see if anyone is able to help me troubleshoot this, as I would really like to try latest Nixos.

24

I've had those errors on my system for years. I never thought that they were NixOS specific. I just assumed something to do with a buggy firmware:

Enabled 4 GPEs in block 00 to 1F
ACPI Error: Aborting method \_SB.PCI0.GPP2.PTXH.RHUB.POT3._PLD due to previous error (AE_AML_UNINITIALIZED_ELEMENT) (20240322/psparse-529)
[x~20]
ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (domain 0000 [bus 00-ff])

I don't notice any ill-effects from them, so it may be a red herring. I have a:

$ < /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/board_name
ROG STRIX B450-F GAMING

with a 5900X.

I don't usually see as many prints as you have there, but it's quite a few, and the number seems to vary (grow?) over time. I keep meaning to investigate it, but haven't got around to it.

I think you should keep looking in your logs for other problems. If you can share the full log I'd be happy to take a look.

Thanks for the reply! I will investigate further, and try to share the logs if I figure out a smart way to do it.

FYI a great way to share your logs (if you have internet on the machine but no GUI) is to use a pastebin like 0x0.st. E.g. do journalctl | curl -F'file=@-' https://0x0.st and post the link here.

I have the same motherboard! I also rock the AMD 6700 XT graphics card, which I acquired this year, so it would defo leave a sour taste in my mouth if this was the guilty puzzlepiece in the my stack.

Whilst trying to install other .iso's late last night i kept seeing the ACPI errors over and over again, which has me thinking this is a problem with my hardware setup, as you suggested by others. Journalctl command results in this if thats to any help; https://0x0.st/Xt2e.txt

and this is lsmod;

lunix@fedora:~$ lsmod | grep amdgpu
amdgpu              17293312  158
amdxcp                 12288  1 amdgpu
drm_exec               12288  1 amdgpu
gpu_sched              69632  1 amdgpu
drm_buddy              20480  1 amdgpu
video                  81920  2 asus_wmi,amdgpu
i2c_algo_bit           20480  2 igb,amdgpu
drm_suballoc_helper    16384  1 amdgpu
drm_display_helper    253952  1 amdgpu
drm_ttm_helper         12288  1 amdgpu
ttm                   118784  2 amdgpu,drm_ttm_helper

Do you also struggle with extremely long boot times? Whenever I reboot or start the computer up, I am stuck with watching the ROG Asus logo for approx 5 whole minutes... Even if I try to press delete to enter bios, it still takes that long for it to enter bios. However, this doesn't always happen, sometimes it decides to be "quick about it". I've just made sure I'm running the latest bios version, and have set all values back to default values. So not sure what it can be. It only started this year, too, after acquiring the AMD GPU...

No, I haven't seen anything like that. That's odd.

Agreed with others that this is likely a BIOS issue, and it would be good to check for a firmware update first.

In particular, this looks like it might be an issue with the USB port locations described by your BIOS ACPI. Maybe one of the embedded root hubs? You might be able to play with USB settings in the BIOS Config to see if that helps, especially loading default values. I also think it might be possible to blacklist ports from kernel parameters and that could be a good check... but I'm not very familiar with the parameters in recent years and didn't find anything in a quick search.

As a last ditch, you can disable ACPI entirely, but it can/will cause very odd performance and configuration issues along with no power management. (This goes double for portable systems.)

Hmmm might be, I'm also experiencing very long boot times. Normally have to wait 3-6min while watching the Asus ROG logo before the system decides to boot up. Might just be easier to look for a new mobo than to troubleshoot something I know so little about to be honest.

That's definitely a frustrating situation you have, and I very much encourage you to take the path that feels most possible to you!

Before moving on, I would like to point to trying what u/mvirts suggested, disabling ACPI from the grub bootloader. It's easy and great for getting an installer running and working, and sometimes the freshly installed and updated OS whisks the problem away.

But regardless of what you choose, I wish you much luck in your endeavours!

ACPI bugs are common and can typically be ignored, but...

without a GUI

how do you know it's even trying to start one? what happens if you try it yourself manually?

In my experience, most hangs with a message about amdgpu loading on screen are caused by an amdgpu issue of some kind. I'd check to see if amdgpu ends up being loaded correctly via lsmod | grep amdgpu and just a general journalctl -b 0 | grep amdgpu to see if there's any obvious failures there. Chances are that even if it's not amdgpu, the real failure is in the journal somewhere.

Could be a wrong setting of hardware.enableRedistributableFirmware (should be true) or the new-ish hardware.amdgpu.initrd.enable (can be either really but either true or false might be more or less reliable on your system).

I ended up booting up bazzite, as I had to have a working computer for today. But ran the commands to see what it resulted in, but not sure what to make of the logs. However when trying to install other .iso's late last night i kept seeing the ACPI errors over and over again, which has me thinking this is a problem with my hardware setup, as you suggested. I have the AMD RX 6700 X card.

Journalctl command results in this; https://0x0.st/Xt2e.txt

lunix@fedora:~$ lsmod | grep amdgpu
amdgpu              17293312  158
amdxcp                 12288  1 amdgpu
drm_exec               12288  1 amdgpu
gpu_sched              69632  1 amdgpu
drm_buddy              20480  1 amdgpu
video                  81920  2 asus_wmi,amdgpu
i2c_algo_bit           20480  2 igb,amdgpu
drm_suballoc_helper    16384  1 amdgpu
drm_display_helper    253952  1 amdgpu
drm_ttm_helper         12288  1 amdgpu
ttm                   118784  2 amdgpu,drm_ttm_helper

I'd try the kernel version used in 23.11 to see if that fixes it. Add boot.kernelPackages = pkgs.linuxKernel.packages.linux_6_1; to your config (make sure to add it before the closing }) and sudo nixos-rebuild switch . You can also try older versions, like linux_5_19. If it doesn't fix the problem it might be that the ACPI error is a red herring and the problem is something else entirely, in which case it'd be more difficult to diagnose, and I'd recommend just staying on 23.11 for now and only taking the new packages that you need from 24.05. There's a great post on how to do this here: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/installing-multiple-packages-from-unstable-channel-in-configuration-nix/19271/2 (probably also in the docs somewhere but I couldn't find it easily).

If it errors out but it boots, don't worry about it. BIOS bugs will sometimes do that.

If either a newer or older kernel version is available, try that.

It does eventually boot, but it takes a solid 5 min before it decides to, and not sure how i can troubleshoot it...

I dont know if this is the issue, but is your motherboard bios up to date? I had some weird error like this before and after updating my bios it worked.