Re: Debian 9.4 and Aspeed/AST2400

[Jens Sauer]

Am Freitag, den 15.06.2018, 16:31 -0700 schrieb  Ryan C:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> We are having trouble getting Linux to function properly on SuperMicro
> hardware (X10SRI-F + E5-2620v4) which uses the AST2400 for VGA output. We have
> tried several "desktop" distributions: Ubuntu, Fedora, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, and
> Debian. As well as several versions of Ubuntu. We noticed the issue first
> starts with Ubuntu 16.04.2 and is still present in 18.04. In 16.04.1 and below
> the video is working fine. Debian is also using a newer kernel which has
> problems with this aspeed chip.  
> 
> Our issue is that the video output is very very slow at updating. Even the TTY
> framebuffer console can be slow at rendering. We open a window or click a menu
> and we can see each line of the display being drawn very slowly. Similarly,
> the login screens respond very slowly to keyboard input and mouse lags and
> jumps around.
> 
> We have narrowed the issue down to specifically to Linux Kernel version 4.9
> and above. Running Kernel version 4.8 or lower has no video issues at all.
> 
> Is this a known issue? Is there a known fix? Maybe we need to roll back the
> BIOS?
> 
> There are two possible fixes we found, but they may just be covering up the
> issue rather than fixing it:
> 
> 1) set the cpu frequency in Linux to the maximum speed, with "performance"
> governor. This helps, but doesn't completely solve the slow video rendering
> and tearing. Also, it is not permanent. 
> 
> 2) Set the gpu/vga OPROM to "EFI" in the BIOS. This seems to fix the slow
> graphics issue on the desktop, but does not help with the slow rendering on
> the login screen.
> 
> From what we can tell, the "ast" video driver is being used. Moving the ast
> kernel module from one system do another doesn't do anything, but switching
> between 4.8 and 4.9 is where everything breaks. 
> 

Do you have the same issue in the KVM/HTML5 viewer over IPMI?

I use a X11SSM-F witch has also the AST2400. Currently I use the stretch-
backports kernel because the EDAC module of kaby lake cpu's is not supported in
4.9

With 4.15 I had some strange wrong color output during boot, the tty color
switched to red.
This issue was gone gone after the installation of intel-microcode from stretch-
backports.

Have a nice day,
-- 
Jens Sauer 

GPG Key: 5C0B0084
Fingerprint: 75F3 6232 1F69 82E8 F5E0 D151 850E 2908 5C0B 0084


signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part

Debian 9.4 and Aspeed/AST2400

[ABMX Ryan C]

Hello,

We are having trouble getting Linux to function properly on SuperMicro
hardware (X10SRI-F + E5-2620v4) which uses the AST2400 for VGA output. We
have tried several "desktop" distributions: Ubuntu, Fedora, Xubuntu,
Lubuntu, and Debian. As well as several versions of Ubuntu. We noticed the
issue first starts with Ubuntu 16.04.2 and is still present in 18.04. In
16.04.1 and below the video is working fine. Debian is also using a newer
kernel which has problems with this aspeed chip.

Our issue is that the video output is very very slow at updating. Even the
TTY framebuffer console can be slow at rendering. We open a window or click
a menu and we can see each line of the display being drawn very slowly.
Similarly, the login screens respond very slowly to keyboard input and
mouse lags and jumps around.

We have narrowed the issue down to specifically to Linux Kernel version 4.9
and above. Running Kernel version 4.8 or lower has no video issues at all.

Is this a known issue? Is there a known fix? Maybe we need to roll back the
BIOS?

There are two possible fixes we found, but they may just be covering up the
issue rather than fixing it:

1) set the cpu frequency in Linux to the maximum speed, with "performance"
governor. This helps, but doesn't completely solve the slow video rendering
and tearing. Also, it is not permanent.

2) Set the gpu/vga OPROM to "EFI" in the BIOS. This seems to fix the slow
graphics issue on the desktop, but does not help with the slow rendering on
the login screen.

>From what we can tell, the "ast" video driver is being used. Moving the ast
kernel module from one system do another doesn't do anything, but switching
between 4.8 and 4.9 is where everything breaks.

Best regards,
Ryan Capote
Team ABMX Servers
www.abmx.com | Facebook
 | YouTube
 | Twitter



714-258-2269
ry...@abmx.com