At first I had a lot of network issues with Gigabyte B550M using Ubuntu (20.04).
I thought installing an offboard card and disabling lan on bios settings would solve it.
Since that, the machine hasn’t gone offline as it was happening before, but every +2 days on it simply becomes unresponsive.
I also found it difficult to hard reset even with the power button, and a few times taking off the power was the only solution.
I really do not know if it indeed becomes unresponsive, or if both keyboard/mouse simply stop working, as I have seen some posts about them not working with this board as well.
I have already tried manually changing kernel versions, without success. While some suggest newer versions, others suggest that it seems to be compatibility issues from version 5.4.xx on. It doesn’t seem that other linux distros work well either, but I haven’t tried myself any other than ubuntu.
It sounds like you have a problem with memory running out. Use the command line utility “htop” to keep an eye out on that.
As for your motherboard issues, have you installed latest BIOS? Try fwupd, if that is not up to the task you need to get more creative by utilizing, for instance, FreeDOS on a boot drive (or booting into a WIndows partition if you have one available).
Also, it would help if you are more specific than B550M as that only tells us it is an mATX motherboard from Gigabyte, currently Gigabyte has the following B550M variants:
And there is no chance it is a RAM issue. It has a total of 128 GB lol.
I have seen similar reports, but it also a different thing - for some the sound doesn’t work, or the keyboard/mouse, a lot of people had similiar network issues as I previously had using the onboard card.
I am not sure about the latest BIOS version, though. Will check and get it back here later.
Currently there is not a windows partition, and I would very much like to leave it like this. If nothing works, I am considering using windows+WSL, but this would be a last resource.
Spec sheet for the model shows it supports both Q-Flash and Q-Flash Plus. He should be able to update directly from a USB flash drive in BIOS or by hitting the ‘End’ key on boot.
I’d try running it on a single stick of RAM for a few days to see if it makes a difference. Or let a memory test tool run overnight (multiple passes) just to rule out it being faulty RAM.
Okay, let’ try this and see how it goes. I’ve just checked and I had F12 version installed and could successfully install F13 version. As per the manufacturer website, there does not seem to have any major fixing for this kind of issue, but who knows…
Maybe a relevant info, on another note, I missed out: my kernel version is <5.11.0-43-generic>
(I have already tried to manually change it before, to solve the network issues, and could not do it, so it is the same as installed along with this ubuntu version)
For kernel issues, you can get the latest available Ubuntu LTS kernel by installing the linux-generic-hwe package:
$ sudo apt install linux-generic-hwe
If you want the latest-and-greatest (please note, not stable!), then you need to manually compile. This is a lot more tricky on Ubuntu, but can be done. This is not recommended for any sort of productivity system however.
I would also try to strip down the system to a bare minimum and see if that helps things any.
They could use the Mainline tool provided through a PPA by the Ubuntu kernel team. Has a GUI and everything and there’s no need to manually compile. Of course it’s still not recommended to daily drive those kernels.
I would like to avoid it s well (just like I would like to avoid using windows+wsl), but as for now I had tested a bunch of different things and nothing seems to work…
On a side note, if it was a RAM issue shouldn’t it be showing up at htop?
Recently (for example) I’ve been running something with all 16 cores, but RAM usage is around 14-16Gb of 128 Gb.
If you don’t know what ZFS is, do not worry - it is not enabled by default. Some users have enabled ZFS since they hear it is an “awesome technology” and fail to account for the amount of RAM it eats up.
You are correct about htop though, if it was a RAM fill issue it would’ve crept up.
Have you bought a proper cooler? That 5950X might just get way too hot for that motherboard.
Yes, and it is a desktop equipped with 3 fans (okay some might argue pro water cooling bla bla), the whole set up seems fine in this sense. It does not seem to be overheating - it has been previously tested for it and I am also able to check the temperature. Now, for example (all 16 cores busy, machine is on for about ~23 hours):
Btw, funny thing is: it always stays on and with no problems for about 2 days.
2~3 days it works fine, then it freezes as I have described.
So I am still monitoring to see if the BIOS update I’ve made yesterday could make any difference. Guess I’ll be having fun with this during christmas dinner
