Nouveau error when booting live CD Solus Budgie

TIny-Hacker

Hello! I'm trying to boot the Solus Budgie ISO from a USB flash drive. I'm using the version of the ISO from the downloads page (4.3). It will display this error "nouveau 000:07:00.0: unknown chipset (b76000a1)" and then it will freeze.

My specs for reference:

RTX 3060 GPU
Ryzen 5 5600x CPU
16 GB RAM

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance! 😄

infinitymdm

TIny-Hacker I'd guess the issue is that your GPU is too new for the version of nouveau that ships on the old ISO. I may well be incorrect there though, so if someone more knowledgeable comes along, please correct me.

Have you tried booting with the nonfree drivers?

infinitymdm

infinitymdm Have you tried booting with the nonfree drivers?

Unfortunately I think I was just mistaken here - I was thinking of other distros (specifically Manjaro) that offer this option.

TIny-Hacker

Hey, thanks for responding! I don't know how to boot with the nonfree drivers. When I booted the ISO, I only saw "Firmware Settings" and an option to boot solus. I've seen on other distros an option to boot with nonfree drivers, but I was unsure how to for solus. Would you be able to explain?

zmaint

I've had better luck using the 4.2 ISO with Nvidia, but this has been with the Plasma version.

You could remove the graphics card, install Solus, do your full upgrade, then shut down and reinstall the card. Should be able to go from there.

TIny-Hacker

zmaint I can't remove the graphics card, because I don't have any on-board graphics.

tomscharbach

TIny-Hacker I can't remove the graphics card, because I don't have any on-board graphics.

If you have a desktop, is there any chance you have an older GPU card that you can stick in temporarily to install Solus? If so, the problem should sort itself out after you have installed and updated (sudo eopkg update). After the update, you will be using kernel 5.15, which I believe has the right drivers for the RTX 3060 GPU. At that point, you should be able to stick the RTX 3060 into the desktop and be good to go on boot. That's about the only thing I can think of other than to wait until the new ISO is released later this year or early next.

zmaint

TIny-Hacker Do you have a second functioning PC? A bit outside the box, but you could put your new hard drive in it, install, update, then just put it back in the new PC. Or you could install as is on the old PC, update everything, then use Clonezilla/Rescuezilla to make an image of your install.. then just install that to the new PC, run doflicky (make sure to check the 32 bit library box) and you should be off to the races.

TIny-Hacker

tomscharbach Is it possible for me to build a newer version of the ISO?

[deleted]

TIny-Hacker No

tomscharbach

TIny-Hacker No. Solus uses specialized, custom ISO-building tools. Years ago, Solus allowed access to ISO-building tools, but changed that practice because a few cowboys abused the privilege, distributing unofficial ISOs and in some cases charging.

tomscharbach

TIny-Hacker @zmaint For what it is worth, I use a spare computer (Dell Optiplex Micro, 6th Gen i5, Intel onboard 620 graphics) to install Solus (and occasionally other distros as the mood moves) on an m.2 drive, update, and then put the drive into the computer on which I am going to run Solus. I don't clone or use doflicky. I just set up the drive on the Optiplex and install it into the computer that I want to use to run Solus. Solus seems to adjust to the different hardware without issues on boot. The only downside that I can see is that the drive shows up by name (rather than Linux Boot Manager) in the computer for a few reboots. But it seems to work fine so it might be worth a try. Good idea, @zmaint.

TIny-Hacker

Sadly, I don't have a second PC to do the install on. Here's something I did try:

Boot the live CD and get the Nouveau error
Ctrl-Alt-F2 and log in as root
Connect to network via nmcli
Update system with sudo eopkg up

However, there wasn't enough space on my USB drive so the upgrade failed. However, I'll try this again soon with a larger drive when I am able to and see how it goes.

I also thought of the possibility of upgrading in a VM, then flashing the ISO, but I haven't done that yet.

tomscharbach

TIny-Hacker
Boot the live CD and get the Nouveau error
Ctrl-Alt-F2 and log in as root
Connect to network via nmcli
Update system with sudo eopkg up

Interesting workaround. Please report how it works out.

[deleted]

TIny-Hacker The installed version will still be what the ISO is originally equipped with.

TIny-Hacker

It still says not enough space, I'm thinking that the filesystem created when flashing the ISO is just too small. I tried updating individual packages (xorg-driver-video-nouveau and linux-current), but it still didn't work.
I'm not sure which packages need to be updated to have support for my video card, so if anybody knew it would be great. However, it doesn't look like it'll be possible to update the entire system while still in the ISO. Does Solus have a CLI installer I could use (since I have access to the command line?)

TIny-Hacker

[deleted] My thought was, if I could use an installer that didn't require a DE and could be ran in the command line, I could install Solus to a bigger drive and update the system there.

zmaint

TIny-Hacker Does the Solus live USB give you a GUI? IE does it boot to a desktop environment? If so do the install. Reboot, get your black screen. Reboot with the install USB in, go back to the live environment then chroot in and do the updates/upgrades via CLI then reboot again without the USB. https://getsol.us/articles/troubleshooting/boot-rescue/en/

TIny-Hacker

zmaint No, I don't ever make it to a desktop environment. I boot the live CD, get an option "Install Solus", which then gives the nouveau error and freezes. However, from the nouveau error I can use Ctrl-Alt-F2 to access a CLI, which I could use to update, except that the partition with the live CD on it is too small for the update (And I don't know how to successfully expand the partition). So my thought was, if there was a CLI based installer (Debian has this I think?), I could install to a larger disk, then be able to run the update.

Basically, I have access to no DE, only a CLI, and less than 1 GB free space for updates.

zmaint

TIny-Hacker you trying to install the budgie version? I'm thinking I have an old PC in storage. I could do a base install, update it, then clone it and share the ISO with you.

Another totally off the reservation thought... install it in a vm. Update. Then ise that to replace the nouveau files you need on the live usb.

[deleted]

TIny-Hacker

However, from the nouveau error I can use Ctrl-Alt-F2 to access a CLI, which I could use to update, except that the partition with the live CD on it is too small for the update

chroot into your installed system following the instructions posted by zmaint and update there.

TIny-Hacker

zmaint Yes I'm trying to install the budgie version. I'd much appreciate that 😀

I may also give the idea with the VM a try. I thought of doing that earlier but kind of put it off since I'm not that experienced with VMs, but that might be my only solution left.