APU2 (4.6.8) - Occasionally, BIOS boots the second drive

[Strykar]

This is an odd issue, and I would like to know how to troubleshoot it.

I recently updated to 4.6.8 and I now it will randomly boot into the second drive instead of the first. It once booted into the second drive with me manually selecting the first drive via F10 but I haven't been able to replicate that. I can replicate it booting the second drive if I reboot a few times.

It's set to boot to SD card, but will occasionally boot to mSATA.

[pietrushnic]

@Strykar any chance you can catch both firmware boot logs? I think we can replicate similar configuration and test it, so hopefully, we can reproduce that problem.

[Strykar]

@pietrushnic If you point me to some documentation to enable these logs you speak of, I'd be happy to. I don't see a BIOS logging option when I search the docs.

[miczyg1]

@Strykar I suspect that SD card sometimes disappear from bootmenu and as a resut it boots from mSATA automatically. I have build a v4.6.8 binary for apu2 with verbose log output in SeaBIOS. Please flash it on Your board, set the bootorder as You attached above. Keep rebooting (no need to press F10) and gathering serial output to files until platform boots into undesired medium. Send us the log files from both cases and we should be able to determine what has gone wrong.

[Strykar]

@miczyg1 That makes sense and would explain the odd behavior.

It went to the wrong drive at the first reboot after flashing the debug version.
I chose SD as the first device, wrote it to the BIOS but it rebooted to the mSATA.
Two logs at https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/xy2DnWKX5F/

[miczyg]

@Strykar I thing that @miczyg1 should be referenced in your comment, as I have no idea what the topic is about ;)

[pietrushnic]

@Strykar please use pastebin or similar service for logs since it trash conversation. Thanks, in advanced.

[Strykar]

@pietrushnic @miczyg1 Done. Do the logs indicate it's SD detection that's causing the issue?

[miczyg1]

@Strykar everything looks fine at the first glance: bootorder is set well and SD card is detected. I assume there is a bootable system on SD card? If not, SeaBIOS can fallback to the next medium on priority list which would explain such behavior. I will try to reproduce it.

[miczyg1]

@Strykar i have performed an automated test utilizing following procedure:

1. Set SD card boot priority to highest
2. Boot apu2 (not pressing F10) and check if desired system is loading
3. Reboot platform and repeat step 2. twenty times
4. Set msATA boot priority to highest
5. Boot apu2 (not pressing F10) and check if desired system is loading
6. Reboot platform and repeat step 5. twenty times

On mSATA I had installed Linux debian 4.9.0-4-amd64
On SD card I had installed pfSense 2.4.2

Unfortunately (or fortunately) each time apu booted into desired system. @Strykar what is the estimated frequency of booting into undesired media (x out of y times)? Maybe I should increase the repetition counter.

[Strykar]

Every 4-5 reboots it boots the wrong device here.

[pietrushnic]

@Strykar we have to be as close to your configuration as possible. Did you try any other combinations of SATA/SD devices? Maybe this is feature of your hardware?

@miczyg1 can you add screenshot/test framework logs of boot menu, just to compare how we are different with what @Strykar has.

[miczyg1]

@pietrushnic see my comment above, I was not entering to boot menu, to not interfere bootorder in choosing boot storage. So i do not posses such screenshots.

[pietrushnic]

@miczyg RTE should have logs

[caadar]

Similar issue on APU1D with actual 4.8.0.2 or 4.6.10.

Test setup 1: SD card and mSATA disc. Can boot from SD card only by manual selection through F10, else it try mSATA card first.

Test setup 2: SD card only. All works as expected.

Reproducibility: always.

The same with SD card and USB pendrive.

It seems important, that despite of SDCARD is on top position in boot order, in the boot menu mSATA or USB pendrives is always on top, so APU try to boot not from SDCARD.

[miczyg1]

@caadar apu1 had broken bootorder settings. It should work now with v4.8.0.5. I will link here the release page soon.

[miczyg1]

@caadar v4.8.0.5 is already released with fixes for apu1 bootorder. Please give it a try: https://pcengines.github.io/#mr-15

[miczyg1]

@Strykar I have spent more time and tried again to reproduce Your problem. However bootorder works as expected always. This time I have done:

1. 50 boot cycles with SD as top priority - always booted to SD card (with Debian)
2. 50 boot cycles with mSATA as top priority - always booted to mSATA disk (with pfSense)

Tested firmwares: v4.6.8 and v4.8.0.5.

By installing different systems I was always sure, that I booted from desired drive. Since I could not reproduce the issue even once on both firmware versions I have to close the issue.

@Strykar if the problem will still exist in the newest versions, feel free to reopen the issue. I will investigate it once again then.