Grub stuck with non blinking cursor on GB-BLPD-5005

abusse · n00b Joined: 27 Oct 2017 Posts: 8

Hello everyone,

I'm just trying to setup my brand new Brix GB-BLPD-5005 with a Pentium Silver J5005. I did an EFI install as described by the handbook and used an Ubuntu Live-CD during the install. After rebooting, the EFI sees the entries created by grub-install. However, after selecting it, the system simply gets stuck with a non blinking cursor. It doesn't even clears the POST screen.

I already tried to play a little with the grub configuration parameters, but I'm suspecting that it doesn't even get that far. As the grub setup on the Ubuntu live CD didn't have any issues, I assume that it's not a general issue of grub. However, I'm a little bit stuck now and do not know what else to try. So I would appreciate some help.

Keruskerfuerst · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 10:34 am Post subject:

Can you post grub.cfg?
Kernel?

And....

abusse · n00b Joined: 27 Oct 2017 Posts: 8

grub.cfg

Thats the current config. I already tried it without gfxmode set.

.config

Kernel is 4.14.52 and boots without any issues using the Ubuntu grub.

Keruskerfuerst · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 10:42 am Post subject:

Which grub version?
And did you compile grub yourself?

abusse · n00b Joined: 27 Oct 2017 Posts: 8

Its the current stable, so 2.02-r1. And yes, I compiled it on that machine.

Keruskerfuerst · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 11:29 am Post subject:

Can you try grub-static?

abusse · n00b Joined: 27 Oct 2017 Posts: 8

You mean the package grub-static or grub2 with static flag? If you mean former, will it work with EFI and an NVMe drive? Its a long time since I used GRUB version 1...

Keruskerfuerst · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 2:24 pm Post subject:

You wrote, that the system boots fine with Ubuntus Grub.
Why not try that Grub version.

Or install Grub 2.02-r2 (unstable) from Gentoos packages.

abusse · n00b Joined: 27 Oct 2017 Posts: 8

After I did an emerge -e world just in case, I tried 2.02-r2 with the same result. So I started digging into the Ubuntu option. As I am lazy, I started with EFI files from the internet that yield the same result as my Gentoo loader. So I continued to try the ones from the live CD. And those worked immediately. However, they dropped me directly to the grub shell. So I also tried to copy the grub directory from the live CD as I suspected some incompatibility between the Ubuntu and Gentoo setup. Still, it showed the same result. During the tries I noticed that grub shows errors for a split second. So I took a time-lapse video to be able to see it and it says:

Keruskerfuerst · Posted: Sun Jul 15, 2018 2:21 pm Post subject:

Then something is wrong with the grub.cfg and partitions.

abusse · n00b Joined: 27 Oct 2017 Posts: 8

I thought so as well and fiddled around with the config but couldn't get it to work in any way. So I decided now to boot the kernel directly from EFI as the system will probably not receive kernel updates or modifications very often.