Debian Serial Console Issue
Hello!
I have a unique setup here and I've spent easily 6 months trying to figure out where my problem is. I Have a QNAP TS-h973AX and I have setup Debian 12.0, with kernel 6.1.0-17 back in July. It was days of trying to get the serial console to work. The issue is that serial console works perfectly till I boot Debian. This is regardless of if its the installer or my currently running environment. At very random and frequent times, the serial console will completely freeze. It stops accepting any input, and does not ever refresh. Some times if I run 'beep' command over SSH, it wakes the serial console up. Or if I connect my Dell D3100, it also wakes the serial console back up. I do not understand why this works. It was the latter that allowed me to inch through setup to get Debian installed. I am at a loss as to why this happens. I have had it happen as early as the moment the kernel is loaded, or as late as 10 minutes after logging into the shell, with the serial console. The serial console is at 115200 baud. This device has a AMD Ryzen Embedded V1500B CPU. This system does not have any HDMI/VGA/DVI/DP Output. I only have this UART interface. If anyone has any insight, or needs any additional info, please let me know. Thanks! |
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Qnap has been kind enough to allow the undeclared feature of letting users put an alternate Operating system on their products. Some models that do not have traditional video output, aren't officially supported by Qnap, which is probably why the UART interface isn't even documented. The 'firmware' that you're referring to, is in the simplest terms, a /boot partition on a USB module attached to a USB header on the main board. I have removed it in favor of running my own environments, and to prevent accidental erasure of it. I got Debian on it by connecting a bootable Debian Installer USB to it, and with the UART connected to a USB Adapter to my desktop. I would like to resolve this issue for when I need to install something else, or nuke and rebuild. Honestly, I would like to understand why the UART Randomly locks up in the way that it does, and why random unrelated actions seem to sometimes wake it back up. |
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However, If the problem was only the freezing, I'd have probably tried other USB-UART adapters already, but since this works perfectly in the bios menu, up until I boot something, along with the fact that I can unfreeze it by doing 'beep' or plugging in a random USB device once Debian has booted, is strange, and leads me to think this could be some bizarre low-level hardware/kernel issue. This is entirely conjecture however. I don't have a clue what's happening here. Quote:
I obviously cannot SSH to the console to perform a reinstallation, and if SSH/Networking breaks, I need a reliable backup option. Thanks for your help. |
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This is where all output goes, when I boot into any cli-driven OS. More specifically, it's where the installation interface is for a Linux distro of any flavor. Debian for example. There will not be an SSH Server to connect to when I shut down, and boot a Debian installer flash drive. |
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Should be able to unplug it and have it on the other device. But I'd not trust this in any way, since (if you're using a standard USB stick), the read/write cycles are going to wear it down pretty quick. Just not meant for 'daily driving'. |
Apologies, this week was nuts. I did 16 hours shifts all week an only had time for sleep.
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Most of the time, I can get Linux to boot, and even logged in and run a command or two. The UART suddenly dies, often in the middle of a command, where the command output partially prints. Yes, if it is enabled, I can SSH into it after UART dies However, my issue is getting a new Debian install, where the issue will manifest during the text installer, and SSH isn't an option. Quote:
And yes, I will not install the / partition to the USB drive, but instead to 4 2TB SSDs in RAID10, and using the USB as /boot. Should help a lot with keeping wear down. Problem is now, I cannot use another computer to do this install, as I do not have one that will allow me to connect 4 SATA Drives to perform the install. This is ultimately why I want to resolve this issue. I did take your advice and bought another USB UART adapter. It is faster than the ESP8266 I was using, but the random drops, and overall behavior is identical. |
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