Mytek Stereo192 Not Connecting

[agent_kith]

Power outage in my neighborhood yesterday, so no progress for me.  

Email received.  Thanks much, agent_kith!

Got the new kernel uploaded with no incident, but cannot get it to stay as the boot kernel for my system.  I know, I know: why on earth does this guy have so much trouble...

The Boot Kernel section does show two items in the dropdown: 5.4.0-89-generic or 4.4.9-rt17-amd64-ng-mytek.  I select mytek, of course, click Save and reboot but the 5.4.0-89-generic just keeps coming back.  I saw a segmentation fault after one reboot, but just once and have not had it again.  

I did notice that when I change the Boot Kernel and click save, the boot kernel changes back immediately before I can even reboot the OS.  Might be related.  

I am using version 1.2.0.  I suppose I could update to 1.2.1 but was just trying to keep my problems isolated before upgrading.  

As always, I'll keep chipping away at it.

Hmm. Seems the kernel changing code isn't working. Which is strange because it worked in my setup (negatively as I was running this in a virtual machine)....

There's also the possibility the mytec kernel will not boot properly on your setup if you installed Ubuntu in EFI mode (i.e. with CSM off).

How good are you at building your own kernel?

[bigmo]

 

Hmm. Seems the kernel changing code isn't working. Which is strange because it worked in my setup (negatively as I was running this in a virtual machine)....

There's also the possibility the mytec kernel will not boot properly on your setup if you installed Ubuntu in EFI mode (i.e. with CSM off).

How good are you at building your own kernel?

You're awesome.  I appreciate you sticking with me.  

Earlier tonight  I SSH'd into my server and successfully edited the grub bootloader base on this post:
https://www.snakeoil-os.net/forums/Threa...60#pid1560

Nice.  But still not loading the kernel we want.  At least it stopped booting into advanced options and blowing up.  lol.


My homework now:
1.  Check how Ubuntu was installed.  EFI mode?  I'll have to find out.  
2.  Building my own kernel?  Should I disclose that I was a software developer in a previous life?  I am willing to give that a try.  If you have any docs on the forums, that would be of great assistance as my Linux is a bit rusty.  

Thanks!

[agent_kith]

2.  Building my own kernel?  Should I disclose that I was a software developer in a previous life?  I am willing to give that a try.  If you have any docs on the forums, that would be of great assistance as my Linux is a bit rusty.  

It's actually not that difficult, just time consuming to experiment with various kernels to get that magic one. Steps roughly are
Download kernel source:

1. Download RT patch
   
2. Extract everything on your Snakeoil computer (this is easiest, but can be offloaded to another faster computer in the future)
   
3. Apply RT patch
   
4. Install all the tools necessary to build a kernel (google for list)
   
5. run "make oldmenuconfig"
   
6. run "make config" and enable/disable things you like
   
7. run "make modules && make bzImage"
   
8. run "sudo make modules_install" to install modules
   
9. copy bzImage as /boot/vmlinuz-give-this-a-name
   
10. update /etc/default/grub to use the new kernel
    
11. run "sudo update-grub"
    
12. Reboot and pray.
    

This is just a quick walkthrough. Will have more details later, and this will be automated in the future. Submit your computer config, and wait for an email to download the ZIP file. The new system will hopefully make it easy for users to collaborate and find that magic kernel.

Edit: Also refer to the Linky link referred in the Wiki.

[bigmo]

Discovered my server is not in EFI mode by downloading and checking efibootmgr.  

EFI variables are not supported on this system.  

I'm thinking your statement of:
"...possibility the Mytek kernel will not boot properly on your setup if you installed Ubuntu in EFI mode (i.e. with CSM off)" means my system actually should boot properly with the Mytek kernel.  Now whether installing it in that mode is different than running it in that mode...I dunno, but I'll bet they are the same.

Ok.  Onward!

[agent_kith]

Discovered my server is not in EFI mode by downloading and checking efibootmgr.  

EFI variables are not supported on this system.  

I'm thinking your statement of:
"...possibility the Mytek kernel will not boot properly on your setup if you installed Ubuntu in EFI mode (i.e. with CSM off)" means my system actually should boot properly with the Mytek kernel.  Now whether installing it in that mode is different than running it in that mode...I dunno, but I'll bet they are the same.

Ok.  Onward!

You have to use the mytec kernel then. Although it's an older kernel, it should boot up fine. and that has the mytec kernel compiled in, so in theory should work. If boot up fails, recover manually by changing the default kernel from the grub boot loader.

[bigmo]

Nice.  But still not loading the kernel we want.  At least it stopped booting into advanced options and blowing up.  lol.

So here was a problem right under my nose.  The mytek linuz file was causing an error with 20.04 server: 

Kernel Panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

I chased that one down for a while, but this led me to try:

sudo update-initramfs -u -k version

which also didn't work.  I read in a post somewhere regarding Ubuntu 20.04 that others had trouble getting that version to compile  or run custom kernels, so I reinstalled 18.04.  I was able to get the 1.2.0 installer to run and added the vmlinuz mytek file, and that worked fine as well.  But when I added the mytekusb2-generic.fw file I suddenly lost my network connection.  Truly weird.  I'll have to try to repro that one, but it mimics what I saw last week.

So in the end the mytek kernel doesn't boot with a fresh install of 20.04, at least not on my system here.  

Will try to restart the networking some time tomorrow...or just start over again.  At least the 18.04 seems to be behaving better than the 20.04.  Go figure.

[agent_kith]

Will try to restart the networking some time tomorrow...or just start over again.  At least the 18.04 seems to be behaving better than the 20.04.  Go figure.

Things will go better once the kernel builder stuffs is done.. Unsure at this stage when I'll get to start on that, time will tell .

[bigmo]

No worries.  I'm sure you have a very long list of things to solve.  

Been working with the networking issue that shuts off once the mytek kernel gets installed.  I mean, everything gets wiped out.  Stepping through very carefully as I may be able to start it back up, but Ubuntu 18.04 went to netplan and yaml files so setup bits (as far as internet searches) are all over the board.  At least I now have a handle on how the resolv.conf file works.  More as soon as I can get better answers!

[bigmo]

2.  Building my own kernel?  Should I disclose that I was a software developer in a previous life?  I am willing to give that a try.  If you have any docs on the forums, that would be of great assistance as my Linux is a bit rusty.  

It's actually not that difficult, just time consuming to experiment with various kernels to get that magic one. Steps roughly are

I'm going to head down this kernel building road.  I was trying a solution today that would let me use ifup/ifdown and simplify my network setup, but the suggested commands ended up running into permission issues that just went nowhere.  

Off to kernel land.  

[agent_kith]

I'm going to head down this kernel building road.  I was trying a solution today that would let me use ifup/ifdown and simplify my network setup, but the suggested commands ended up running into permission issues that just went nowhere.  

Off to kernel land.  

If you hit permission errors, just precede your command line with 'sudo' (without quotes), usually works.