Arch Linux

Heronymous

Member

Registered: 2016-08-18

Posts: 11

[Boot issue] Screen going black after initramfs is loaded by Xen.efi

The Problem
I've been trying to get Xen to work as my hypervisor with Arch Linux as my dom0. The problem comes when I try to boot using Xen.efi. For a brief moment I get white text lines, one showing that xen-4.7.0.cfg is used then vmlinuz-linux is loaded, intel-ucode is loaded, the initramfs is loaded, and finally a string of hexdecimal numbers that I can only assume to be address locations. After that the screen goes black and stays that way.

Steps taken in installing xen
I followed the setup and installation steps in https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/xen with the difference being that I used this git as my package source since the AUR package for xen is outdated and doesn't compile if I try to compile it with EFI support. I did compile and install binutils with --enable-targets=x86_64-pep as required for UEFI support:

mainuser@Primary ~ % ld -V
GNU ld (GNU Binutils) 2.27
  Supported emulations:
   elf_x86_64
   elf32_x86_64
   elf_i386
   elf_iamcu
   i386linux
   elf_l1om
   elf_k1om
   i386pep
   i386pe

Here is the boot loader entry:

mainuser@Primary ~ % cat /boot/loader/entries/Xen.conf                     
title           Xen
efi             /xen-4.7.0.efi

Along with the .cfg for xen:

mainuser@Primary ~ % cat /boot/xen-4.7.0.cfg
[global]
default=xen

[xen]
options=console=vga loglvl=all noreboot
kernel=vmlinuz-linux cryptdevice=/dev/VolGroup00/LVol_root:enc_root root=/dev/mapper/enc_root rw
ucode=intel-ucode.img
ramdisk=initramfs-linux.img

Some information about my setup
As I'm sure is obvious from the .cfg, my root is encrypted. In addition, it is an LVM setup with LUKS on top. My key for my encrypted root is stored on a remote usb. My video driver is nouveau and my bootloader is systemd-boot.

Attempts to fix
I tried the proposed fixes in https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=141123 but none seemed to have worked.

Last edited by Heronymous (2016-08-18 01:33:45)

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sniper7kills

Member

Registered: 2014-10-06

Posts: 2

Re: [Boot issue] Screen going black after initramfs is loaded by Xen.efi

I'm in the same boat as you; Any chance you have made any progress?

sniper7kills

Member

Registered: 2014-10-06

Posts: 2

Re: [Boot issue] Screen going black after initramfs is loaded by Xen.efi

I was able to get Xen 4.7 installed using https://gitlab.com/johnth/aur-xen/blob/master/PKGBUILD

As per the PKGBUILD:
#linux-4.7 EFI boot panic issue (patch linux)
#http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1608.2/03448.html

After recompiling the kernel due to the single line change; and rebooting I no longer receive a blank screen.

Hope this helps!