Can't boot genericx86-64-ext flasher image using v2.72.0 or newer

Product support balenaOS
1

The short version: If I build a genericx86-64-ext image from the current balena-intel master branch, the USB stick isn’t bootable on my UEFI-based system. But if I build an older revision, it boots fine. The problem seems to have been introduced in v2.72.0+rev1.

The long version:

From a balena-intel clone, if I do

export MACHINE=genericx86-64-ext
git config submodule.recurse true

git checkout -b good v2.71.7+rev1
source layers/poky/oe-init-build-env
bitbake resin-image-flasher

I get a flasher image that boots successfully when I write it to a USB stick and put it in my test system (details about the system at the bottom of the post).

If I then walk forward to the next tagged version:

git checkout -b bad v2.72.0+rev1
bitbake balena-image-flasher

and write the resulting image to the exact same USB stick and put it in the exact same test system, it doesn’t even get as far as showing the grub boot menu: all I get is a completely blank screen except for a flashing cursor in the upper left. No logs or debug messages or title or anything I can paste here, just the hardware manufacturer’s splash screen for a few seconds and then an empty black display with the cursor.

If I mount the boot partitions from the two images and run diff -r on them, they don’t appear to have any differences aside from resin changing to balena in a couple filenames.

Doing a binary diff on the two images shows that they’re (of course) not identical, but I’m not sure which differences are significant.

For now, I’m going to just base my custom builds on 2.71.7, but obviously it’d be preferable to be able to track more recent changes as they appear. Happy to poke at this some more if there are additional things I should try.

Information about my test system from its BIOS:

  • BIOS Information:
    • BIOS Vendor: American Megatrends
    • Core Version: 5.010
    • Compliancy: UEFI 2.4; PI 1.3
    • Project Version: LPC-83x-L-05
    • Build Date and Time: 10/05/2020 10:33;36
  • Processor Information:
    • Name: Broadwell ULT
    • Brand String: Intel(R) Core™ / i7-5650U CPU @ 2.20GHz
    • Frequency: 3100MHz
  • Total Memory: 8192 MB (DDR3)
  • Memory Frequency: 1600 MHz
  • PCH Information:
    • Name: WildcatPoint-LP
    • PCH SKU: Premium SKU(BDW-U)
    • Stepping: 03/B2
    • LAN PHY Revision: B1
  • ME FW Version: 10.0.30.1072
  • ME Firmware SKU: 5MB
4

Hi Steven, thanks for the detailed report, that is very helpful! I’ve pinged our OS maintainers to have a look at this thread, and see if we can figure out what’s going on here.

8

Hi there, could you try to build the generic-amd64 machine from GitHub - balena-os/balena-generic: Balena support for generic devices? The generic-x86-ext machine and generic-amd64 machine are in the process of being merged

10

Did you happen to give that a try, Steven?