Hello all,
Background
I have just bought a PC from PCS with the following spec:
Processor (CPU) Intel® Xeon® Silver 4110 8-Core (2.1 GHz, 3.0GHz Turbo, 11M L3 Cache)
Motherboard ASUS® WS C621E SAGE (DDR4 RDIMM, 6Gb/s, CrossFireX/SLI)
Memory (RAM) 64GB Kingston DDR4 2666MHz ECC Registered (2 x 32GB)
Graphics Card 11GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 Ti - HDMI, 3x DP GeForce - GTX VR Ready!
1st Hard Disk 480GB KINGSTON UV400 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (550MB/R, 500MB/W)
2nd Hard Disk 2TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
Power Supply CORSAIR 1000W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable 1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling INTEL BXSTS300C THERMAL SOLUTION
Thermal Paste STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking 2 x ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORTS
USB Options MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Unfortunately (apportioning no blame) the PC came with Windows installed which I didn’t want and I had a slight headache installing a version of Ubuntu 16.04 – various bios/boot issues and driver errors, detailed below. I eventually wiped the partitions using gparted (and probably the windows boot stuff too) and after a few reinstalls of Ubuntu I now have a working install (which appears okay once I reach it). I also think I have managed to install the GPU - an involved process I do not wish to repeat soon. In order to configure the GPU I had to install a different version of the Ubuntu kernel, version 4.4 XXX which is now set to default.
Issues and current behaviour
When I start the PC by pressing the button it takes about 20 seconds before I hear the beep and anything starts appearing on the screen. The first screen that flashes up is a screen with the AMBIOS/ASUS details and instructions on what to press to enter Setup etc…
Then up comes an Asmedia 106x SATA Controller screen with a few messages (using PCIE Gen 2 x2) and saying ‘Can’t find any device’. Then we flick back to the previous AMBIOS/ASUS screen before a screen saying ‘Initializing Intel Boot Agent GE v1.5.72’ and to ‘press Ctrl + S to enter the Setup Menu’.
Then we go back to the AMBIOS/ASUS screen for the 3rd time and finally into Grub where we are faced with the following:
Ubuntu
Advanced options for Ubuntu
EFI/ubuntu/fwupx63.efi
EFI/ubuntu/mmx64.efi
System setup
The default if I don’t touch anything is ‘Advanced options for Ubuntu’ and defaulting to the version 4.4 kernel. On choosing this (or just not touching anything and it defaulting there) I get a pink grub screen with the following message:
Loading Linux 4.4.0-040400-generic …
Loading initial ramdisk …
Then a black screen with:
[0.336994] Error parsing PCC subspaces from PCCT
/dev/sda6: clean, 238105/1831424 files, 1997552/7323904 blocks
Then finally we are through the OS about a minute later and all seems okay…
Goal
My aim is simply to diagnose the cause of any of the warning messages and errors and resolve as appropriate. Given the time to install the GPU and initial hassle getting Ubuntu on I’m keen to not repeat this process and thus want to ensure I have things in good order to start and if I need to reinstall things then to do it before I set up the PC for use.
I am more than happy to provide any more information or diagnostics as required – please just ask. I can provide screenshots, videos etc… of the startup if it helps. By comparison by 5 year old PCS PC boots in about 10-15s from hitting the button.
Many thanks for any responses in advance.
Mark
P.S. A note about me: I’m using the PC for machine learning research and whilst I am adept as a programmer, with the lower-level OS stuff I’m definitely in the ‘google and try what seems to make sense – usually from Stack Exchange or the like’ camp.
Background
I have just bought a PC from PCS with the following spec:
Processor (CPU) Intel® Xeon® Silver 4110 8-Core (2.1 GHz, 3.0GHz Turbo, 11M L3 Cache)
Motherboard ASUS® WS C621E SAGE (DDR4 RDIMM, 6Gb/s, CrossFireX/SLI)
Memory (RAM) 64GB Kingston DDR4 2666MHz ECC Registered (2 x 32GB)
Graphics Card 11GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 Ti - HDMI, 3x DP GeForce - GTX VR Ready!
1st Hard Disk 480GB KINGSTON UV400 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (550MB/R, 500MB/W)
2nd Hard Disk 2TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
Power Supply CORSAIR 1000W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable 1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling INTEL BXSTS300C THERMAL SOLUTION
Thermal Paste STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking 2 x ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORTS
USB Options MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Unfortunately (apportioning no blame) the PC came with Windows installed which I didn’t want and I had a slight headache installing a version of Ubuntu 16.04 – various bios/boot issues and driver errors, detailed below. I eventually wiped the partitions using gparted (and probably the windows boot stuff too) and after a few reinstalls of Ubuntu I now have a working install (which appears okay once I reach it). I also think I have managed to install the GPU - an involved process I do not wish to repeat soon. In order to configure the GPU I had to install a different version of the Ubuntu kernel, version 4.4 XXX which is now set to default.
Issues and current behaviour
When I start the PC by pressing the button it takes about 20 seconds before I hear the beep and anything starts appearing on the screen. The first screen that flashes up is a screen with the AMBIOS/ASUS details and instructions on what to press to enter Setup etc…
Then up comes an Asmedia 106x SATA Controller screen with a few messages (using PCIE Gen 2 x2) and saying ‘Can’t find any device’. Then we flick back to the previous AMBIOS/ASUS screen before a screen saying ‘Initializing Intel Boot Agent GE v1.5.72’ and to ‘press Ctrl + S to enter the Setup Menu’.
Then we go back to the AMBIOS/ASUS screen for the 3rd time and finally into Grub where we are faced with the following:
Ubuntu
Advanced options for Ubuntu
EFI/ubuntu/fwupx63.efi
EFI/ubuntu/mmx64.efi
System setup
The default if I don’t touch anything is ‘Advanced options for Ubuntu’ and defaulting to the version 4.4 kernel. On choosing this (or just not touching anything and it defaulting there) I get a pink grub screen with the following message:
Loading Linux 4.4.0-040400-generic …
Loading initial ramdisk …
Then a black screen with:
[0.336994] Error parsing PCC subspaces from PCCT
/dev/sda6: clean, 238105/1831424 files, 1997552/7323904 blocks
Then finally we are through the OS about a minute later and all seems okay…
Goal
My aim is simply to diagnose the cause of any of the warning messages and errors and resolve as appropriate. Given the time to install the GPU and initial hassle getting Ubuntu on I’m keen to not repeat this process and thus want to ensure I have things in good order to start and if I need to reinstall things then to do it before I set up the PC for use.
I am more than happy to provide any more information or diagnostics as required – please just ask. I can provide screenshots, videos etc… of the startup if it helps. By comparison by 5 year old PCS PC boots in about 10-15s from hitting the button.
Many thanks for any responses in advance.
Mark
P.S. A note about me: I’m using the PC for machine learning research and whilst I am adept as a programmer, with the lower-level OS stuff I’m definitely in the ‘google and try what seems to make sense – usually from Stack Exchange or the like’ camp.
