[OpenIndiana-discuss] No rootfs module provided

[Gary Mills]

On Sun, Sep 10, 2017 at 08:33:49AM +0200, Nikola M wrote:
> On 09/ 8/17 03:34 PM, Gary Mills wrote:
> >I just put together a system with a ASUS B350M-A system board, an AMD
> >Ryzen 3 1200 CPU and an ASUS HD 6450 Silent video card.
> >
> >When I attempt to boot the OI-hipster-gui-20170502 DVD on this system,
> >I get the boot menu normally, but it's followed by these three lines:
> >
> >     Loading unix...
> >     Loading /platform/186pc/amd64/boot_archive...
> >     Loading /platform/186pc/amd64/boot_archive.hash...
> >     Booting...
> >     No rootfs module provided, aborting

> First see if your motherboard is set to behave like BIOS and not
> like UEFI for booting, because as far as I know illumos can't be
> booted off an EFI.

I've tried it both ways, but both seem to behave the same way.  It's
possible that the motherboard is trying UEFI first, and then BIOS
emulation if that fails.

> Then I would like to know wither you are using USB image or DVD
> .iso, because there can be some differences - few months ago I tried
> many USB images and couldn't boot (non-conclusive tests so I might
> be wrong). So try DVD/.iso.

I'm using the GUI DVD image.

> Also it *could* be something with Ryzen/illumos for support (you
> could ask on illumos ML if anyone is working on it) but I suspect it
> is not about that just for booting.

The problem seems to be in the loader or in the memory map of the
motherboard.  I'm using two 4-gig DIMMS.  I'm getting some help from
Toomas Soome, who knows about these two things.

[...]
> HD 6450 video card is probably not going to be supported and working
> under illumos, for the lack of drivers (anyone with more info can
> chap in to add more).

I expect it to use the VESA driver.  That should be adequate for now.

[...]
> Btw, are you using Unbuffered ECC RAM with Ryzen? (That ASUS B350M-A
> supposedly supports UDIMM).
> I recently contacted ASUS support and they confirmed that every
> motherboard they make supoports ECC UDIMMs AND is working in ECC
> mode with Ryzen. Yet they lack official or other pointing testing ,
> injecting and reporing application so this is where OS support might
> come.

I'm using ECC UDIMMs, although I can't tell if ECC is really working.

> I contacted (proprietary) Memtest86 support and they wanted to send
> me their test builds, that would try out their testing program
> working on Ryzen , but I can't afford right now to buy a new Ryzen
> Machine.

I've run Memtest86-7.4 on this machine for several hours.  It reported
no errors.  It did identify the CPU and DIMMs correctly.  I did have
to boot Memtest86-7.4 in UEFI mode.  It didn't work at all with BIOS
emulation.

> Can you contact me privately, so we can work out ECC RAM testing on
> Ryzen with those test builds, since you already have a hardware
> (Asus MB supports it)?

I'd be happy to try the test builds.


-- 
-Gary Mills-		-refurb-		-Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada-