Rangeley Atom NIC/USB issues

[darkfader]

Hi,

 

I tried installing using Arc Loader on a Supermicro A1SRM-2758F.

There was various super odd problems, like a kexec boot working well but otherwise losing link on the NIC interfaces, and even USB needing to be re-plugged to be bootable...

I was - or am - about to throw away the board.

In arc loader I had zero issues when it was running, but when rebooting into the final thing the NIC Ports would just go offline.

(kexec was the magic trick, but only ONCE... So I finished an install and then it was dead again)

 

At last, I found this https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/72625/why-is-usb-not-working-in-linux-when-it-works-in-uefi-bios#comment522529_72698 and then this

https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2017-May/066113.html

 

This special Atom model with QAT and i350 NICs and all the other fancy stuff didn't have VT-d stuff.

Is there a way I can pass iommu=soft reliably to the DSM kernel?

[darkfader]

[Solved] partially but sufficiently.

The board has a ton of bugs apparently.

 

Lesson / settings to look into:

 

- set C1E states to disabled

- ensure above 4G encoding is enabled

- all boot / oprom settings should be set to UEFI

- boot target "UEFI OS" (it'll not boot the loader otherwise)

 

USB on-board never worked properly. I had to use an USB add-in card.

 

IOMMU settings: there's a VT-x switch, but really no VT-d switch.