I’m trying to install Fedora Silverblue 44 on a Tuxedo Core One (Ryzen 9 7900, Radeon RX 9070 XT). The same machine is currently running Fedora Workstation 44 without any issues whatsoever.
But Silverblue is giving me trouble. First, the installer cannot start Wayland:
Wayland did not start in the expected time, falling back to text mode. There are multiple ways to avoid this issue:
Do not load the stage2 image over a slow network link.
Wait longer for Wayland startup with the inst.xtimeout= boot option. The default is 60 seconds.
Load the stage2 image into memory with the rd.live.ram boot option to decrease access time.
Enforce text mode when installing from remote media with the inst.text boot option.
The first and fourth suggestions don’t seem to apply, since I’m installing from a DVD. The second suggestion didn’t help. With the third suggestion, the installer hangs.
So I chose to use the text mode installation, thinking that maybe it’s just the installer lacking the proper amdgpu drivers. Surely a properly installed Silverblue image would run as well as Workstation does.
Text mode installation did finish susscessfully. After a reboot, the plymouth boot screen appears for a few seconds, but then I’m dropped at a login prompt:
Fedora Linux 44.1.7 (Silverblue)
Kernel 6.19.10-300.fc44.x86_64 on x86_64 (tty1)
fedora login: _
The text mode installer never asked me to set up my username and password (only locale, timezone, destination, and partitioning scheme). So I’m stuck at this login with no idea how to proceed.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am not ready to accept that my beloved Silverblue cannot run on this machine when Workstation installed without problems and is running flawlessly.
EDIT: I also tried installing in basic graphics mode, but I just got the same message about Wayland not starting in the expected time.
This is really unexpected. If Workstation works then Silverblue should as well as we use almost the same packages and we definitely use the same kernel & firmwares. I don’t know what would be the issue here. We do have a different initrd but as you booted past that this should not be the issue.
I tried installing from the Fedora Silverblue 43 DVD, and the results were identical. So this is not a one-off with Fedora 44, it must be something deeper that works for the Workstation Live DVD, but doesn’t for the Silverblue installer.
Nevermind, Wayland just needed more time. I had previously retried the installation with inst.xtimeout=120, and got the same problem. I retried again with inst.xtimeout=300 and Wayland started. The rest of the installation proceeded without problems, I have a working Silverblue system now.
So the solution was there in the error message the whole time. Maybe the Workstation Live DVD uses a more generous timeout than the Silverblue installation DVD?
@siosm One more thing: You mentioned earlier that Workstation and Silverblue use the same kernel and firmware. But I noticed that Workstation allowed me to connect via WiFi out of the box (AMD Wi-Fi 6E RZ616), while Silverblue says “No WiFi adapter found” in Gnome Settings. Is there a missing firmware package I need to install?
I’ve seen various races regarding wayland startup and Anaconda that can make it take a long time for Wayland to come up; sadly I’ve seen them both on all ways that ISOs can be built.
As far as I’m aware in Fedora 43 and 44 (which are built with Lorax) the xtimeout should be the same. I wonder if we’ve seen this happening in OpenQA, I’ll ask around.
Ignore this. Turns out Workstation is no longer seeing the WiFi either. I’ll investigate, but either way it’s a new issue and doesn’t belong in this topic.
To be sure you can also list the installed packages on each system (rpm -qa) and compare the lists. If you find something missing in the Atomic Desktops, feel free to open an issue: https://forge.fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/tracker