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I have just purchased an AsR J4205 board, hoping to use it as a basic server / NAS - I had an older atom board doing this before, and although not an an expert systems admin am not a newbie either (used / installed Linux since ~ 1998), and have done some googling before posting, and read similar posts on here, Asrock and Debian forums.

So board is sold as Ubuntu 16.10 friendly, I've tried this and 16.04, 17.04 and the daily build, and the install always fails just after the grub screen, usually with

mce: [Hardware Error]: Machine check : 0 Bank 4 a6000000000

sometimes also various other errors, eg : udevadm : relink 'libkmod.so.2 .....

I don't think this is just a UEFI issue, I've tried all options with the CSM mode, and both CD / DVD and USB installers

Similarly the board will install win 10, and boot (gentoo based) current Sysrescue cd, so hardware is probably OK I have updated the supplied bios (1.1 reported as buggy) to current 1.4

SO

  • If anyone has this board working stably what did you do?
  • I'm in single channel memory mode (checks ok with memtest) with one 8 gb Sodimm - would dual channel be any better?
  • is board just too new / rare to be well supported?
  • Could it be worth downgrading BIOS to 1.2 which is the version others have reported as working?
  • any other ideas?

Can post further info, diagnostics if that might help.

Thanks

ndrew
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3 Answers3

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A partial answer, which might give others enough info to get their system working, or to give a fuller one if they have in depth knowledge of relevant hardware / linux boot process.

Worked out that next step in boot process might be initialisation of DVD drive, which I had connected to the ASM1061 sata socket (see note above)

Unfortunately the ASM1061 is allergic to (some?) optical drives - not sure if this is plain unsupported, bugs, incompatabilites or what. Apparently some board / card blurbs warn about this in the small print. Mine didn't!
As above it didn't stop Win10 DVD booting, or sysrescue cd. BUT IT DOES CRASH BOOT OF UBUNTU SETUP, EVEN IF DRIVE IS JUST THERE, AND BOOT IS FROM A PERFECTLY OK USB STICK which is what foxed me for a while.

So easiest fix on this board is to swap sata cables about and connect DVD to SOC based controller, or not use it at all. There may be other options based on controller mode settings, or kernel parameters.

So now it boots and installs happily, just have to return my new hard drive because it has bad sectors and fails SMART :( So can't comment on long term stability yet.

Further info in these threads:

Can I prevent an IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE command to a specific device at boot?

Boot failure: failed: command IDENTIFY PACKET DEVICE

ndrew
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The most probable cause of this is faulty motherboard unit. I've had similar problems with system stability. All the upgrades of BIOS versions and newest kernel didn't help. I received new unit and it turned out to be motherboard issue. The new board was working perfectly fine.

Related posts https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1682999 Intel Apollo Lake (J3455) random frequent freezes on UI and MCE error on boot

Wojciech Pietruszewski
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I had the same problem with a very strange solution, worked for both Ubuntu 18.04 & Mint 19.2 : the quoted message appears more than once.

After the first time, I took the USB stick out, and then there was some sort of a message complaining about no media, so I stuck it back in. Then the installer started fine.

But I can't assure that it works till the end, since I installed it otherwise in the end: I installed the OS on another computer and transferred the medium to this one. Then I booted Ubuntu and started bootrepair.

After that, the issue was solved.

damadam
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Nadav
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