On 01/05/2025 at 23:29, Esteve Fernandez wrote:
I bumped into the same issue as Nolan. I didn't try installing
bookworm, but same outcome with the live CD (works) and via the
Calamares installer (does not work).
What do you mean exactly by "live CD" and "Calamares". Calamares is the
graphical installer in the live session, so this is confusing.
There are basically three different installation systems for Debian:
- Debian installer on installation ISO images (netinst, DVD...)
- Debian installer in live ISO image boot menu
- Calamares installer in graphical live session
I noticed that the system installed via Calamares comes only with a
handful of firmware files.
Do you mean that the system installed the other way comes with more
firmware files ?
I couldn't get systemd to open a rescue
terminal, perhaps because of this same issue,
rescue or emergency ? They are not the same.
"rescue" starts a few services such as udev which loads kernel modules.
"emergency" does not start any services, so only modules included in the
initramfs are loaded.
so I booted a console via
the installation CD and then installed the firmware-intel-graphics
package on the target chroot and updated the initarmfs image:
The culprit seemed to be that the firmware files for the Xe iGPU for
Lunar Lake were missing (/lib/firmware/xe/lnl_gsc_1.bin ,
/lib/firmware/xe/lnl_guc_70.bin, /lib/firmware/xe/lnl_huc.bin). I tested
this by manually copying these three files instead of installing the
Debian package, and the system booted up fine afterwards.
Good catch. Nolan, can you try it ?
I guess that blacklisting the "xe" module would allow to boot too,
although with degraded graphics.
I just tried installing only the base system (no desktop at all), and
I managed to get an emergency console by passing the rescue boot arg.
Again, rescue or emergency ?
I don't know why I don't get one if I have installed a desktop flavor,
but there must be a systemd unit that gets installed in that case, and
that unless the Xe firmware is found, it'd prevent the emergency console
from showing.
It seems that the modalias for the GPU in this machine (Intel
Corporation Lunar Lake [Intel Arc Graphics 130V / 140V] [8086:64a0]) and
others advertised by the xe module are not in the
/firmware/dep11/firmware-intel-graphics.patterns file included in
installation ISO images, so the installer does not install the needed
firmware. Can anyone familiar with the generation of .pattern files
check why some modalias are missing ?
Installing a desktop environment may install plymouth (boot splash
screen) which causes inclusion of xe and other graphic modules in the
initramfs. "emergency" mode does not prevent the initramfs from loading
the xe module and hang.
Installing only a base system does not install plymouth nor include
graphic modules in the initramfs, so the xe module is not loaded in
emergency mode (but is loaded in rescue mode).
