On 10/21/2015 01:07 PM, Chris Schanzle wrote:
> On 10/20/2015 02:03 PM, Brandon Vincent wrote:
>> On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 2:15 PM, Yasha Karant <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> Does anyone have any experience with this platform?  Any suggestions?  Are there BIOS (secure boot, whatever) configurations that must be used other
>>> than what came with the MS Windows system?
>> You'll want to make sure that secure boot is disabled. Additionally,
>> ensure that the system is set to boot in legacy mode and not UEFI.
>> You'll also want to turn off Nvidia Optimus if it is an option in the
>> BIOS. My bet is on the last one.
>>
>> Brandon Vincent
> Yasha originally wrote:
>> On this one, the install process starts (with some complaint from the stock noveau GPU driver), but simply hangs.
> What nvidia graphics board, specifically?  I have the little Quadro K620 and it's fine.
>
> Disabling Optimus is a good idea to try, but this is a desktop - there's no Optimus, but in BIOS Video->Primary Display I am working fine with "Auto" (other options are Intel HD graphics & NVIDIA HD graphics) [why is everything "HD" these days?]
>
> This is unclear exactly where it is stalling for you.  Is it after you click "install" or earlier, trying to get into the graphical installer?
>
> Try booting removing the 'quiet' option.  If that doesn't lead you anywhere, try also adding 'nomodeset'.
>
>
> In the "sharing knowledge and experience" department...
>
> I have some T1700's and they work fine for BIOS booting (CentOS user here).  I did notice a few unusual issues with PXE kickstart booting reliability, but I cannot point the finger solely at this hardware.  6.7 seemed to have major network latency and dropped ping packets (with two different T1700's, thinking it was a bad NIC), but dropping this into /etc/modprobe.d/e1000e.conf helped greatly (about 98%):
>
>      # without (some, all, not tested to detail) of these, network packets would get lost/dropped for long periods on T1700
>      # https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=171716
>      options e1000e IntMode=1,1
>      options e1000e InterruptThrottleRate=3000,3000,3000
>      options e1000e RxIntDelay=0
>      options e1000e SmartPowerDownEnable=0
>      options e1000e EEE=0
>
> EL7.1 had no issues with the networking hardware.
>
> On another system, I wanted to boot off an NVME device, but that requires UEFI to be enabled.  Got me curious to learn more about UEFI booting last week...and I just happened to have a Dell T1700 here to practice with.  In short, even with secure UEFI boot enabled (to use digital signatures to verifykernel modules before loading them), it works.  Don't forget to add your 200MB "EFI System Partition."  I used GPT.
>
> Of course, if you try to use the proprietary nvidia kernel modules, with secure boot enabled, it won't load (since it's not signed and thus, not trusted).  One must learn how to sign them and get your public key trusted by the kernel - the nvidia README has info, as does the RHEL documentation - it's actually an interesting process, providing an interface to load your key into the UEFI system on the next boot.  But there are still pains on kernel updates/nvidia driver rebuilds and securely managing the private key (you don't want to leave it on the system where an attackercould abuse it).
>
> To top it off, I enabled selinux (enforcing) and was impressed to find I could log in with an NIS account, homedir automounted from an NFS server, and actually use Firefox and Thunderbird.  This is likelythe most secure box we have.  :-)
>
> I did just notice I cannot resume after suspend.  No video, unpingable. First system with nvidia 352.55 (to try the upgrade process).  Could be a hundred things. :-)
The issue definitely was the Nvidia GPU and noveau default driver. When 
I removed the modern video interface cable to the monitor but instead 
used plain VGA and the Intel HD video card, the system installed and 
booted just fine.  I did a manual partition, using XFS for all 
partitions except for swap; there were three MS Windows partitions as 
suppled, two very small and one that held most of the 2 Tbyte disk 
space.  I suspected that the two very small ones were used for UEFI or 
some such thing, so I have wasted this storage and leaved these 
untouched.  If it safely can be used, I will use gpartd, etc., to 
recover the space.  The system has two 2 Tbyte drives in a hardware 
mirrored RAID configuration -- SL 7.1 installed with no problem 
retaining this configuration (presumably now mirrored, including the 
boot sector).  It was installed in an area without a network connection 
(no working 802.3 wall port), a small wet lab prep research facility 
under the end user.   I was expecting to have to manually configure the 
network as it is known to be on a static IP setup, not DHCP.  
Nonetheless, when the RJ45 cable was connected after boot, the system 
automagically configured itself and was on the Internet, Web, etc.  I 
installed the EPEL repository and MATE, as the end user (as with myself) 
is not an enthusiast for either current KDE or Gnome.  I plan to 
download the RPM of the Nvidia proprietary driver package and test the 
Nvidia card.  The machine is not here and the university forbids ssh 
remote connection; thus, I do know the exact Nvidia card that is installed.