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#1 2023-02-11 00:01:02

DrLucky
Member
Registered: 2021-09-21
Posts: 22

SOLVED kernel 6.x not booting due to vfio-pci kernel modules

EDIT
It turns out the system wasn't hung at all, the password prompt simply wasn't visible, blindly inputting the encryption password worked just fine.
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I have an arch system that runs just fine on kernel 5.19.x

Since kernel 6 came out, I have attempted the upgrade multiple times, keeping an entire image of my boot drive cloned via clonezilla for quick reverting.
Everytime, my boot hangs shortly before I am prompted to enter my LUKs password. The screen displays "Starting version 252.5-1" and hang there, requiring a forced power off.

I was suspicious that either zfs or vfio was the cause, but unable to troubleshoot the issue at the time, I simply reverted back to my cloned image and prevented the kernel upgrade via pacman.conf

I have tried several times since every few weeks to see if it was a bug worked out.

Today I have dived deeper. I made a clone of my boot drive with clonezilla and then updated to 6.1.9-arch1-1 (6.1.10 does not have a compatible zfs-linux package yet) and attempted a reboot.

With chroot, I attempted uninstalling zfs-linux and zfs-util and rebooted to no avail.

I originally followed the vfio guide here on the wiki when setting up vfio sometime last year https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PCI_pa … h_via_OVMF
So with chroot, I back tracked my steps
I removed the vfio modules from /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and ran mkinitcpio -P

After this I was able to reboot successfully into my system. Hoping it just needed one successful, I tried re-adding the modules only to get caught in the same freeze at boot up.

I noticed "modconf" was listed before "encrypt" in the HOOKS line in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf, and tried moving it after as that is when I notice it hanging, but this did not resolve it.


I'm glad to have narrowed down the root cause, but upset its vfio passthrough. Is this a known issue with kernel 6.x?
I can always revert back to my 5.19 clone from this morning. But would love to fix this once and for all if anyone knows what the solution is.

Last edited by DrLucky (2023-02-12 23:19:05)

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#2 2023-02-12 19:00:50

4shadoww
Member
Registered: 2016-07-28
Posts: 6

Re: SOLVED kernel 6.x not booting due to vfio-pci kernel modules

Have you checked kernel log? It's most likely booting, but EFI framebuffer breaks due to vfio binding. So you should be able to login and startx.
Also you could just install another kernel like linux-lts rather than make copies of the boot drive to try 6.x out.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=280436
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 3#p2063423

Last edited by 4shadoww (2023-02-12 19:19:40)

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#3 2023-02-12 23:21:29

DrLucky
Member
Registered: 2021-09-21
Posts: 22

Re: SOLVED kernel 6.x not booting due to vfio-pci kernel modules

4shadoww wrote:

Have you checked kernel log? It's most likely booting, but EFI framebuffer breaks due to vfio binding. So you should be able to login and startx.
Also you could just install another kernel like linux-lts rather than make copies of the boot drive to try 6.x out.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=280436
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 3#p2063423

yep, it was indeed booting, found a comment on a forum someplace advising to try entering the encryption password blindly and it worked perfectly.

Good idea about installing a different secondary kernel. I got so fixated on having a clonezilla backup I missed that entirely

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