Please revise the installer to add vmd to modules

General system
1

It’s already been handled in manjaro latest release this is causing a lot of failure with this Intel vmd crap that is in laptops, causes a non-bootable state because the nvme drive can’t be seen.

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2

I’m not sure if it has been added to the Calamares installer yet but we are aware of it and i will check. I have dealt with it a number of times.

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3

latest calamares release does not have the option, i think Manjaro done that with MHWD?

It will be possible to add but the way calamares handles mkinitcpio makes this a bit complicated.

But we can add it into our cleaner script.

And it will need testing if some users with such hardware would be here to do so I could start implementing a fix for this.

It will need also to add this to load on ISO boot I think ?

3 Likes
4

I’d say so as well. But unfortunately I cannot test it because I don’t have such a machine.

But I added the vmd module to mkinicpio.conf on another real machine, and that caused no problems. After reboot lsmod shows vmd.
The same with a virtualbox vm.

5

How does one add the kernel parameters on the installer or it can’t?

  • vmd added to MODULES in /etc/mkinicpio.conf
  • nvme_load=YES added to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub

Edit: I have had about 4 cases that required this setup lately

6

ISO does use systemd-boot :wink:
Possible to add the both entries on ISO before building, and to have them on installed systems we will ned to add a script that does it or use one we have already and adding it:
adding a sed command to modify /etc/mkinitcpio.conf after calamares done setup what is needed to the file and regenerate it…

And grub can be modified here:

The Problem I see is that we do not know exactly if calamares is adding anything at the MODULES="" line… what would make it complicated to sed the files… would need to find out if it will be possible to first read the line and modify it without removing entries…

7

I had a discussion about that with cal-devs already… calamres is overwriting anything on mkinitcpio.conf as it has implementations to add needed stuff into it…

So we only can modify the file after calamars done that…

8

I’m not entirely sure it needs both the vmd module in mkinitcpio and the kernel parameter? I think on some instances i was able to get EOS to install with just the vmd module. :man_shrugging: Not all problems seem to be exactly the same. Some nvme drives are not seen. I don’t have the hardware also. It seems to be these consumer branded Intel laptops with raid controller(fake raid or software raid)or Intel Optane also cause some issues?

9

it is always a good idea to add compatibility layers to the ISO as if the first try does not work or users are unable to boot they do not get a good experience from the start up :wink:

10

The devices causing the issue is devices which is constructed of two devices which are shown to the OS as one - you could call it fake_raid and it actually works like a raid 0 with the difference being that the smaller or lower part - if one can call it that - is the fastest and on Windows this part is used as storage for the OS - at least that is what I am told.

Something called Intel Volume Management - an example is Optane H10 devices.

It is difficult to speculate on why it is made that way - but the lower cost of cells used for the slower part of the device comes to mind.

11

I understand what the hardware is. Personally i don’t care for it. Some of these are one device with a software layer. (Firmware)

12

So we can do the MODULES line (and grub changes) in c_c_s.

It would be nice to somehow know if vmd module is needed.
Does anyone know a way/command to see that?

13

I only know if i look at the hardware using inxi and i see a raid controller. Or RST in the Bios.

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14

Could you show the inxi output showing this?

15

I don’t have the hardware but if i could find a post where i helped a user?

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16

Here is one example:

Hardware-1: Intel Volume Management Device NVMe RAID Controller driver: vmd v: 0.6 port: 4000 bus-ID: 0000:00:0e.0 
           chip-ID: 8086.9a0b rev: class-ID: 0104

Edit: Another example where using only vmd and not the kernel paramater as i stated to @joekamprad Sometimes the nvme drive isn’t recognized and can’t be seen.

Edit: Another example where i used both the kernel parameter and vmd.

12RAID:      12Hardware-1 Intel Volume Management Device NVMe RAID Controller 12driver vmd 12v 0.6 
           12port 3000 12bus-ID 0000:00:0e.0 12chip-ID 8086.9a0b 12rev 12class-ID 0104
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17

Thanks! Now I must leave for a while… :wink:

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18

Why wouldn’t you use the initcpiocfg modules in calamares for this? You could just add it find_initcpio_features(). This would have the added benfit of potentially being upstreamed and benefiting all Calamares users.

19

on my question about this, i do not get any info that it will be possible to do that in calamares… so I do not investigate more deeply into try that :wink:
something like this part ?

    if uses_btrfs:
        modules.append("crc32c-intel" if cpuinfo().is_intel else "crc32c")
    else:
        hooks.append("fsck")

    return (hooks, modules, files)
20

Yes. If you just want to hardcode it, you can literally just add:

hooks.append("vmd")

Just make sure it is before the return line.

If you want to detect it, it would be a few more lines to do the detection.