Instructions to create a usb booteable drive

[WEREMSOFT]

Im struggling to create a working usb pendrive to boot the kernel in real hardware on Ubuntu. I dd if=baremetalos.img to the unit in ubuntu, but the booting fails.

It will be amazing if we have detailed instructions saying not only the commands, but also bios configuration in real hardware like secureboot and legacy boot settings and common mistakes like having a legacy boot record in the pendrive.

Thanks

[IanSeyler]

What is the exact command you are using to dd the image? Also, what is the result of booting it on your test system?

[WEREMSOFT]

I followed the readme instructions, the exact command on my computer is

sudo dd if=./sys/baremetal_os.img of=/dev/sda

But here is the funny thing: I know for sure that the pendrive is created correctly, because I can start a virtualbox with it, as you can see in the following image

The configuration of the virtual machine is as follows

But I can not make it work in real hardware, I tried on my desktop computer ASSUS ROG with AMI BIOS 2021 with 12th gen Intel i5 disabling secure boot, enabling UEFI boot, and I have a black screen with some pixels, the following image is illustrative, since this happens in real hardware.

And I tried on my noteboot, a lenovo, don't remember the specs, but with a different firmware, configured similarly, and I have the same screen. I'm pretty sure there is something going on with the bios configuration.

[IanSeyler]

Thanks for the info. So those ‘pixels’ are being displayed by the loader. That final green square is displayed just before Pure64 starts the kernel. So this appears to be an issue with the kernel not starting properly. I think I have an older system that I’ll try as well and see if I can duplicate the issue.

[IanSeyler]

Ok I have tested an older system with the following hardware:

• Intel® Core™ i5-7600K Processor (6M Cache, up to 4.20 GHz)
• Gigabyte GA-B250-HD3 (rev. 1.0)
• 16GiB RAM (2x 8GiB)

It appears the hang during SMP init so it doesn't even get as far as the system you have. Looking into it further.

[IanSeyler]

Disabling SMP init (setting cfg_smpinit to 0 in Pure64's sysvar.asm) gets me the same result as your system.

[IanSeyler]

I've made some progress on this. On my i5-7600K system I found that some of the data it was pulling from the PCIe bus enumeration was invalid. I've added a check for this in a debug-output branch of BareMetal. The kernel and the monitor now start up correctly.

I'm adding some serial output to Pure64 as well. This is the current serial output on boot-up:

Pure64 
- System booted via BIOS
- PML4 @ 0x0000000000002000
- Processing ACPI data
- Configuring BSP
- Initializing PIC
- Starting SMP
- Starting kernel...
64      
bus     
storage 
network 
BareMetal OK

[IanSeyler]

I've rolled my updates into the master repos. Please do a ./baremetal.sh setup and try the boot via USB again.

Also, if that system has a serial port (115200 bps, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity) you should see the following output:

[ Pure64 ]
boot bios
pml4 ok
acpi ok
bsp ok
pic ok
smp ok
kernel start

[ BareMetal ]
64      
bus     
storage 
network 
system ready

[WEREMSOFT]

checking...

[WEREMSOFT]

still have the same result on my desktop and in my laptop. Well now the green pixel that was on the right is with the rest of the pixels on the left if that means something.

[IanSeyler]

Please try with the latest code when you have a moment. I've added some graphical output to the kernel initialization.

[WEREMSOFT]

checking...

[WEREMSOFT]

this is the output

[IanSeyler]

On proper boot up there would be 4 dots. Your system has completed the 64-bit init and the bus init. As there was no third dot it is stuck trying to initialize the storage. I'll do some checking.

[IanSeyler]

Please try the following:

Comment out https://github.com/ReturnInfinity/BareMetal/blob/d9d0695b02a301342f24af41d8d8cb7361a92fd6/src/init/storage.asm#L37 with a ;. Rebuild and try the usb boot again.

This will disable initialization of the NVMe controller if one was found.

[IanSeyler]

If there are still only 2 dots comment out https://github.com/ReturnInfinity/BareMetal/blob/d9d0695b02a301342f24af41d8d8cb7361a92fd6/src/init/storage.asm#L43 as well.

This will disable initialization of the AHCI controller if one was found.

[WEREMSOFT]

Ill take a look within 3 hours from now. Maybe less. I’ll report the result.

[WEREMSOFT]

just to be sure, after making the changes in the storage.asm, I have to run baremeta.sh build && baremetal.sh install correct?

[WEREMSOFT]

ok, commenting the line 37 worked.

[IanSeyler]

Ok good to know. So the kernel found an NVMe device but got stuck in the initialization.