[MinnowBoard] Headless Operation

Wei, David david.wei at intel.com
Sun Nov 27 20:23:29 UTC 2016


Hi,

This is the first time that this kind of UEFI firmware USB issue is reported. We will take some time to reproduce this issue. If it is reproducible, we will investigate.  
Could you tell us is it MinnowBoard Max board or MinnowBoard Turbot board? Which version of UEFI firmware are you running on your board? (You can check the firmware version form main BIOS Setup page) 



Issue:

>>>OK, I kinda figured it out (but not completely). It wasn't the display
>> that was keeping the Minnowboard from booting, it was the lack of a
>> keyboard. More specifically, the lack of a device in the USB 2.0 slot. I
>> suspect this is related to the fact that I am booting the operating
>> system from the USB 3.0 slot. Having no device in the USB 2.0 slot
>> causes the boot loader to not find the boot device.
>>
>> To get around this issue, I'm just going to plug an old flash drive into
>> the USB 2.0 slot when I'm not using the keyboard. That said, if anyone
>> has any ideas about how to get the firmware to boot the USB 3.0 device
>> without a USB 2.0 device, I'm all ears.
>>
>> Unfortunately, even with the flash drive in the USB 2.0 slot, I'm having
>> a little trouble getting the device to boot consistently. I've had it
>> abruptly stop about 3 times with the following screen (over serial):
>>
>> UEFI Interactive Shell v2.1
>> EDK II
>> UEFI v2.50 (EDK II, 0x00010000)
>> Mapping table
>>      BLK0: Alias(s):
>>           PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(0x1,0x0)
>> Press ESC in 1 seconds to skip startup.nsh or any other key to continue.
>> Shell>
>>
>> I also sometimes get this screen:
>>
>> UEFI Interactive Shell v2.1
>> EDK II
>> UEFI v2.50 (EDK II, 0x00010000)
>> map: No mapping found.
>> Press ESC in 1 seconds to skip startup.nsh or any other key to continue.
>> Shell>



Thanks,
David  Wei                                 

-----Original Message-----
From: elinux-MinnowBoard [mailto:elinux-minnowboard-bounces at lists.elinux.org] On Behalf Of eviljoel
Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2016 8:57 PM
To: John 'Warthog9' Hawley <warthog9 at eaglescrag.net>; MinnowBoard Development and Community Discussion <elinux-minnowboard at lists.elinux.org>
Subject: Re: [MinnowBoard] Headless Operation

Hello John,

I've looked into all of these suggestions and I don't think any of them
will work. Here's why:

> 1) jump into the firmware (type exit at the shell prompt) and change
> the default boot order:
> 	http://wiki.minnowboard.org/UEFI#Change_Boot_Order

This isn't a boot order problem. Even booting manually fails when
auto-booting fails. Also, Ubuntu is already the first boot option.

> 2) add a startup.nsh to your UEFI partition that will default to
> running the appropriate boot program on the UEFI partition (like
> bootx64.efi) in the off chance it falls through to the boot shell.

When I get "No mapping found.", the startup.nsh also is not found.

If I reset the system at this point using the 'reset' command, it boots
as expected. I tried to find a reset boot entry, but I didn't have any
luck with that. I also tried to see if I could save a startup.nsh in
some CMOS storage, but that does not appear to be an option.

I'm pretty sure this is either a hardware or firmware error. I'm not
really sure it is worth my time to try various older firmware versions
to see if that fixes my issue. I could probably mitigate most of this by
purchasing a UPS so the device will not randomly power off.
Alternatively, I could also just buy a device which is actually intended
to be run headless.

I'm still open to new troubleshooting suggestions if anyone has them.

Thanks,
eviljoel

On 11/26/2016 09:50 PM, John 'Warthog9' Hawley wrote:
> Basically there's two ways to solve what you are hitting (which is
> basically that your UEFI on your board doesn't know where to boot to).
> 
> 1) jump into the firmware (type exit at the shell prompt) and change the
> default boot order:
> 	http://wiki.minnowboard.org/UEFI#Change_Boot_Order
> 
> 2) add a startup.nsh to your UEFI partition that will default to running
> the appropriate boot program on the UEFI partition (like bootx64.efi) in
> the off chance it falls through to the boot shell.
> 
> You could manually boot it as well, but that doesn't seem useful to you.
> 
> Slightly more detailed, the reason this happens, is by changing the
> devices present can, possibly, confuse the UEFI system on what it should
> boot, so it defaults to going to the shell.
> 
> - John
> 
> On 11/26/2016 07:16 PM, eviljoel wrote:
>> Hello Jon and Michael,
>>
>> OK, I kinda figured it out (but not completely). It wasn't the display
>> that was keeping the Minnowboard from booting, it was the lack of a
>> keyboard. More specifically, the lack of a device in the USB 2.0 slot. I
>> suspect this is related to the fact that I am booting the operating
>> system from the USB 3.0 slot. Having no device in the USB 2.0 slot
>> causes the boot loader to not find the boot device.
>>
>> To get around this issue, I'm just going to plug an old flash drive into
>> the USB 2.0 slot when I'm not using the keyboard. That said, if anyone
>> has any ideas about how to get the firmware to boot the USB 3.0 device
>> without a USB 2.0 device, I'm all ears.
>>
>> Unfortunately, even with the flash drive in the USB 2.0 slot, I'm having
>> a little trouble getting the device to boot consistently. I've had it
>> abruptly stop about 3 times with the following screen (over serial):
>>
>> UEFI Interactive Shell v2.1
>> EDK II
>> UEFI v2.50 (EDK II, 0x00010000)
>> Mapping table
>>      BLK0: Alias(s):
>>           PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(0x1,0x0)
>> Press ESC in 1 seconds to skip startup.nsh or any other key to continue.
>> Shell>
>>
>> I also sometimes get this screen:
>>
>> UEFI Interactive Shell v2.1
>> EDK II
>> UEFI v2.50 (EDK II, 0x00010000)
>> map: No mapping found.
>> Press ESC in 1 seconds to skip startup.nsh or any other key to continue.
>> Shell>
>>
>> I tend to get this "error" when the devices has been powered off for
>> several minutes. I'm currently researching UEFI boot options to see if
>> there is something I can do. Unfortunately, I'm finding that UEFI
>> documentation is hard to come by.
>>
>> BTW, thanks for the serial port tip. That helped a lot.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> eviljoel
>>
>> On 11/26/2016 01:04 AM, eviljoel wrote:
>>> Hello John,
>>>
>>> Good to hear someone has it working headlessly. Can you tell me the
>>> version of Linux you are using? Can you also tell me your firmware version?
>>>
>>> I'm trying to run it headless over SSH. If I run into problems, I don't
>>> mind plugging it into a monitor from time to time, but generally I was
>>> hoping to run it without a monitor.
>>>
>>> I'll likely try using the serial console later this weekend. It will be
>>> a good way to see if Linux is even starting.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> eviljoel
>>>
>>> On 11/25/2016 11:27 PM, John 'Warthog9' Hawley wrote:
>>>> On 11/25/2016 08:18 PM, eviljoel wrote:
>>>>> Greetings,
>>>>>
>>>>> I've been trying to run the Minnowboard headless with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
>>>>> with the latest Minnowboard firmware. On subsequent boots with a monitor
>>>>> plugged in, the system logs record no boot attempts while headless. It
>>>>> appears that the Minnowboard is not booting Ubuntu or Ubuntu does not
>>>>> get far enough into the boot process to start logging. Plugging in the
>>>>> monitor after the Minnowboard has been powered on does not result in any
>>>>> video output. I'm starting to think the Minnowboard is not capable of
>>>>> headless operation.
>>>>>
>>>>> So what's the story? Is the Minnowboard capable of headless operation?
>>>>> So far, Google hasn't turned up anything but I can't imagine I'm the
>>>>> first one to run into this issue.
>>>>
>>>> I run the board headless, using only the serial console, quite a bit -
>>>> so it is possible.  Not sure how you are trying to run headless, but the
>>>> firmware will output information to the serial port, and assuming you
>>>> have your Linux distro setup correctly (usually by adding
>>>> `console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0` to your kernel boot parameters, but
>>>> I'm unfamiliar with how Ubuntu does it for sure), you should get serial
>>>> console data out.  Not entirely sure what you are seeing, but if you are
>>>> running headless can you confirm your setup with your serial port?
>>>>
>>>> - John 'Warthog9' Hawley
>>>>
>>>
>>
> 

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