[SOLVED] How well does Stretch support Ryzen?

[MH]

I'm running Stretch and am planning on moving to a Ryzen-based system in the next few weeks.

I've seen a lot of conflicting information regarding Ryzen and Linux kernel support. Most recommendations suggest version 4.11 is the minimum required, while 4.12 is necessary to support audio on some Ryzen motherboards. Others claim Stretch can be installed on a Ryzen system, with caveats that are never clearly spelled out.

To prepare for the move to Rysen, I recently attempted an install of 4.11 from backports and ran into problems with modules failing to build, specifically Virtualbox and Nvidia modules. Has anyone successfully installed Stretch on a Ryzen system without any issues? The only related post in this forum that I found was focused on issues with Wayland. Any other issues to be aware of?

[sunrat]

...
To prepare for the move to Rysen, I recently attempted an install of 4.11 from backports and ran into problems with modules failing to build, specifically Virtualbox and Nvidia modules.

I don't know about Rysen [sic] but you need to install matching kernel headers to get any modules to build.

[MH]

...
To prepare for the move to Rysen, I recently attempted an install of 4.11 from backports and ran into problems with modules failing to build, specifically Virtualbox and Nvidia modules.

I don't know about Rysen [sic] but you need to install matching kernel headers to get any modules to build.

Of course kernel headers were also installed. Others have also reported problems building Nvidia modules with 4.11. Additionally, Virtualbox modules failed to compile. Hence the reason for my post. It looks like I will have to rely on 4.9 for at least the near future.

[thatguychuck]

Side question, are you using a 3rd party repository for VirtualBox? IIRC VirtualBox got removed from stable because of their non security friendly release cycle.

[stevepusser]

The current versions of nvidia-driver 375.66 and virtualbox 5.1.26 support the 4.11 kernel builds, so maybe if you would post the output from your failed builds, we could see what's wrong with your configuration.

Note that failed dkms builds also create a log referenced in the output, so of course that would be useful.

[MH]

The current versions of nvidia-driver 375.66 and virtualbox 5.1.26 support the 4.11 kernel builds, so maybe if you would post the output from your failed builds, we could see what's wrong with your configuration.

Note that failed dkms builds also create a log referenced in the output, so of course that would be useful.

I'm running the Nvidia 340 legacy driver. Aside from the kernel I attempted to install from backports, my system is 100% stretch (clean install). Unfortunately, I can't find the logs you are requesting. It seems they were purged when I purged 4.11. There were two make.log files, one each for Virtualbox and Nvidia previously but they are gone now. I don't know where the dkms logs are kept.

In any case, my immediate interest is whether or not anyone has successfully installed Stretch on a Ryzen system, and what their experience was, problems/workarounds, performance, etc. I'll worry about getting 4.11 installed and working if that's really necessary. The only reason I went in that direction was because I thought it would be trivial to do so. Since 4.11 was backported to Stretch I didn't expect any problems. Evidently, issues remain on that front.

[MH]

OK. Looks like I finally found my answer on Reddit. It took a while, but it looks like all the Ryzen specific stuff HAS been backported to 4.9.30. Check out the following link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments ... _have_you/

Also, I found the make.logs @stevepusser was requesting. My poor memory had me searching in /usr/src when I should have been looking in /var/lib/dkms. I'm not posting the contents of those logs because they are extremely long. In any case, the problems with both the Nvidia and the Virtualbox modules are known, it just takes some digging to locate relevant posts. I assume the issues will be sorted by the Debian backports team in the near future.

[sunrat]

I'm running the Nvidia 340 legacy driver.

That driver needed to be patched to work in 4.11 and 4.12 in siduction. Maybe it would work for you. See the thread at siduction forums where there is a link to the patch.
https://forum.siduction.org/index.php?topic=6793.0

Patch is for kernel 4.12
https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topi ... rnel-4-12/

It will probably float downstream to an updated driver in the repos some time in the future.

[stevepusser]

Nice find!

[sunrat]

Haha, not Google-Fu. I run siduction and check their forums regularly.