# 8 penguins is all I see

## Progman3K

Hi!

Installing Gentoo on a brand new machine.

Kernel 3.16.5

After installing the kernel, when I try to boot it, what happens is:

- The screen goes blank

- 8 penguins appear across the top of the screen

Then nothing.

The machine apparently is locked-up because no matter how long I wait, nothing happens.

Waiting for a while and then attempting to ping the machine returns 100% packet-loss.

Does anyone have a clue what I might have done wrong or forgotten?

Thanks

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## xaviermiller

Hello,

Did you enabled devfs automatic mount in the kernel ?

If not, you need at least /dev/console and /dev/null in the root partition.

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## Naib

 *xaviermiller wrote:*   

> Hello,
> 
> Did you enabled devfs automatic mount in the kernel ?
> 
> If not, you need at least /dev/console and /dev/null in the root partition.

 It sounds like he hasn't even reach userland yet.

8 penguins shows the kernel has started & the 8 cores (phy and logical) have been detected but it has then stopped.

@OP have you added some form of kernel commandline arguement like "quiet" that would suppress kernel output.

That would clearly show whether something up with the kernel, missing filesystem drivers (so it can't start init) or as xaviermiller implied, missing the basic two devices for udev to sucessfully start

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## Progman3K

 *xaviermiller wrote:*   

> Hello,
> 
> Did you enabled devfs automatic mount in the kernel ?
> 
> If not, you need at least /dev/console and /dev/null in the root partition.

 

Hello Xavier, thank you for taking the time to reply.

I assume you are referring to these config values

DEVTMPFS=y

TMPFS=y

 *Naib wrote:*   

> It sounds like he hasn't even reach userland yet.
> 
> 8 penguins shows the kernel has started & the 8 cores (phy and logical) have been detected but it has then stopped.
> 
> @OP have you added some form of kernel commandline arguement like "quiet" that would suppress kernel output.
> ...

 

Hi Naib, thank you for the light!

D'oh! There was a quiet directive in the command tail, removing it, messages are displayed.

It still hangs, the last thing written is

fb: switching to nouveaufb from EFI VGA

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## Naib

Getting somewhere  :Smile: 

did you mean to try to use nouveufb ?  do you have an nvidia card.

There are a few pre-req you need to use nouveufb. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-7299880.html

It might be worth booting with something like: video=vesafb:mtrr:3,ywrap vga=0x0318  to see if there are other issues and then proceed to resolve the xorg dependencies w.r.t. using nouveufb, assuming you want to use that

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## Progman3K

 *Naib wrote:*   

> Getting somewhere 
> 
> did you mean to try to use nouveufb ?  do you have an nvidia card.
> 
> There are a few pre-req you need to use nouveufb. https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-7299880.html
> ...

 

No matter what options I try, it always ends with the line

fb: switching to nouveaufb from EFI VGA

It's like it's ignoring the options, yet it does make a difference when I remove the quiet option...

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## Naib

Can you disable to see if there are other issues & just use nvidia binary blob.

Make sure there are not other issues with the kernel (ie it boots fine) then proceed to get nouveaufb working, if you so wish.

do you have xorg and nouveau emerged?

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## Progman3K

What do I enable/disable?

Here's what I get when I press E (edit) at the grub menu

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> setparams 'Debian GNU/Linux, with Linux 3.2.0.4-amd64'
> 
> load_video
> ...

 

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## Naib

ummm why is that debian...

That is the grub menu edit. you need to consider recompiling your kernel to remove nouveaufb as a trial, or as I suggested force vesa

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## Progman3K

OK, complicated story:

I tried installing Gentoo with the live CD but was unsuccessful in getting it to boot.

I installed Debian so that Debian's installer would properly partition everything and make sure the EFI partition was set correctly.

This worked, Debian would boot but would lock up when loading the desktop.

But at least I had a working bootloader.

So using the Gentoo Live-CD, I erased everything on the root partition (sda2) but kept the boot partition intact.

The I installed the Gentoo distribution onto the root partition.

I got it to the point that it would boot, load the kernel and then load the userland and eventually drop me at the login prompt.

But after compiling a new kernel and copying it over the one in the /boot folder, boot stops where I mentioned.

Here's a screenshot:

http://i.imgur.com/ZMoy7Z2.jpg

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## Progman3K

Also, I did try various different video=params, and as I wrote above, the output is always the same...

I'm really at my wit's end, I've NEVER been able to install any machine that has a UEFI bios.

That's why I installed Debian, to see if it could work at all and be certain that all the BIOS options and everything were theoretically correct.

It turns out they are/were, but I'm still unable to complete the installation.

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## Progman3K

OK, all that remains is getting the nvidia drivers to work.

Neither the nouveau nor nvidia drivers seem to work.

Apparently because I am booting a kernel directly from the UEFI firmware and doing so does not provide a standard vga text console.

Which is strange because the uvesa driver permits me to go to the other ttys with CTRL+ALT+Fx and back to Gnome with CTRL+ALT+F7

But the nouveau and nvidia drivers typically either cannot start X or hang the boot.

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