Arch Linux

miles969

Member

Registered: 2013-02-03

Posts: 23

[SOLVED] multiple issues after ram upgrade

hi everyone!

2 new ram modules arrived this morning, which i hastily installed in my machine. this is where the fun starts...

issue 1: no initramfs
so the boot process starts normally it seems. i get past grub and the initramfs starts to load. thats also where it stops dead.
a little google-fu reveals that i should try and chroot from a live iso and recreate mkinitcpio. seems easy enough... but:

issue 2: cannot boot live iso
multiple tries fail, when i finally stumble upon a post mentioning that the live iso cant handle large amounts of ram that well. adding

ram=2048M

gets me one step further. but still no dice. this time she just reboots after systemd does its thing.
what seems like hours later, i manage to get to the root prompt by also adding

nomodeset acpi=off

to the kernel line. so far so good. seems my nvidia gtx 970 and nouveau dont play nice, but that seemed to solve that.
next up: chrooting and rebuilding the initramfs. following the instructions in the beginners guide, i try and mount my root partition, which leads to...

issue 3: cannot mount btrfs root partition
mkdir works fine for the mount point. no problems there. the mount command itself seems to work somewhat too, telling me that sda1 is a btrfs filesystem on an ssd (which it is). then, however, a mysterious series of lines pop up telling me that it is "calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain"...
about a dozen lines of information appear and stop dead yet again.

utterly defeated, i decide its time to do some old fashioned hardware debugging. so i swap out the ram modules (2 sets of 2), popping them in multiple configs in the appropriate slots. memtest64 runs through fine in all configurations. nothing special to be found in the bios either. the 2 sets are from different manufacturers (a-data doesnt make the original set anymore - and havent produced a new set with the same specs), though i did pay attention to the timings, clockspeed and size (everything matches on paper). ending up at the last resort: putting everything back together again as it was originally, i reboot, praying for a familiar boot sequence and maybe even a gdm login prompt. but no such luck today. i am now stuck at

issue 4: putting humpty dumpty back together again
grub loads up normally. systemd fires up and im now faced with this:

INFO task mount:172 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
Not tainted 3.19.2-1-ARCH #1
"echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message.
INFO task btrfs-transacti:194 blocked for more than 120 seconds. 
...repeats last INFO a few times...

so that brings us up to speed i guess. im out of ideas and the interwebs dont seem to have anything more to offer with my somewhat intricate set of problems. i know most of you are tinkerers like myself, and i hope theres someone out there that can help me out. to help you help me, here are a few specs and bits of info that might be of interest:

mobo: gigabyte 990fxa-ud5
cpu: amd fx 8350
ram (old): 2x4GB a-data ddr3 2000Mhz C9
ram (new): 2x4GB avexir ddr3 2000Mhz C9
bios settings: defaults all around, except iommu is activated (iommu=pt added to kernel line to let bios handle iommu)
gpu: nvidia gtx 970

partitioning (from what i can remember - i can post exact info, if its needed):

root: 60GB SSD (btrfs)
home: 200GB SSD (btrfs) 
var: 20 GB on 1TB HDD (btrfs)
storage: rest of the 1TB HDD (btrfs - i think. this may be an ext4 partition, im not 100% certain)

any help or hints are greatly appreciated!

thanks a lot in advance!

regards,
m.

Last edited by miles969 (2015-04-03 17:10:30)

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,659

Re: [SOLVED] multiple issues after ram upgrade

Take the memory back out and verify that things go back to being stable. 
Configure your boot loader to include a memory test.  I think grub and syslinux both have one.
Reboot and test your existing memory using the memory test from the bootloader.
Put in the new memory.
Test the expanded memory.

If all goes well, then continue with this thread.  I think you have memory problems.

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miles969

Member

Registered: 2013-02-03

Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] multiple issues after ram upgrade

thanks ewaller, but i had tried that before...

turns out the arch iso was the culprit. i found an ubuntu-gnome live usb and popped it in. surprisingly, chrooting worked fine with that iso and i managed to boot successfully after running

/usr/bin/mkinitcpio -p linux

a few minor fixes (network device names had changed) and im up and running again... with all the ram, no less!

thanks a lot again!

regards,
m.