Re: Problems booting NetBSD/Xen on Intel NUC 12 Extreme w/ i9-12900

[Johan Stenstam <johani%johani.org@localhost>]

Hi Matthias,

> On 12 May 2023, at 21:06, Matthias Petermann <mp%petermann-it.de@localhost> wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> On 11.05.23 12:27, Johan Stenstam wrote:

> this good discussion here has motivated me to experiment with NetBSD/Xen again. Some time ago I focused on Qemu/nvmm because my newer systems can only boot UEFI and I did not manage to boot Xen especially on the NUCs.
> 
> Something seems to have changed here. With the many helpful suggestions here, I have found a configuration that works on my NUC (NetBSD 10.0_BETA + xen415). In doing so, it behaves exactly as described by Johan:
> 
> <code>
> menu=Boot Xen:load /netbsd-XEN3_DOM0.gz bootdev=NAME=root console=com0;multiboot /xen.gz dom0_mem=512M vga=current,keep
> </code>
> 
> (Result: very slow extremely high resolution console, but a working system).

Ok, good that you’re able to reproduce my problems. Then we know that it is not an artefact of my particular device. 

> I also tried different mopde values for the vga parameter and then also several times had the case that either nothing changed or I only got a black screen on handover to the NetBSD kernel without the system showing any activity afterwards.
> 
> In this context I would like to make a comment that might also help Johan. When I set the parameter to "vga=ask", what I expected (normally a prompt should appear to select the graphics mode) does not happen, the screen also goes black, but the system continues to boot and is then accessible via ssh. The whole thing is also quite fast - maybe this is the workaround for the missing "console=none”.

Aha. Yes, vga=ask has the same effect for me. That’s really useful, at least as an interim solution until someone figures out what’s really going on at the point of handover from Xen to DOM0.

That said, my screen goes *really* dark. As in will not come back, even after a reboot. Only way to get the screen back is via a power cycle. I hope we manage to find a better long term solution.

BTW, what type of NUC are you using? Min is, as I’ve said, a NUC 12 Extreme i9.

Regards,
Johan