Running ‘sudo reboot’ causes shutdown with Intel C224 chipset

Eric Light Hardware, Linux, Operating Systems, Server 13.04, c224, intel, mei, power down, reboot, supermicro, Ubuntu, x10slm-f 0 Comments

The Intel C224 chipset requires some tweaking in order for Ubuntu Server to reboot

When setting up a server recently (the one mentioned in this post), I encountered an odd problem: running sudo reboot would power down the machine, instead of rebooting it! This was occurring on a new Supermicro X10SLM-F motherboard with an Intel C224 chipset, running Ubuntu Server 13.04 Raring Ringtail.

It turns out that the problem is caused by buggy Intel drivers, and the problem can be resolved by blacklisting the mei driver. In order to do this, open up a terminal and enter the following:

$ sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Then add these lines:

# Don't load MEI driver; this allows system to reboot
blacklist mei

Save and exit the file, and enter the following into the terminal:

$ sudo reboot

The machine should now reboot without any problems

Credit goes to Ubuntu forums user thomasberger for offering the solution: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2024096

August 26, 2013

No display on boot in Ubuntu Server 13.04

Eric Light Hardware, Linux, Operating Systems, Server, Software 13.04, c224, display, grub, intel, nomodeset, server, supermicro, Ubuntu, x10slm-f 0 Comments

When performing a recent server setup, I encountered an annoying display problem. The install completed without any problems, but there was no video on boot at all – sometimes the Grub menu appeared (but usually not), and after that the monitor went to sleep. SSH access was working fine, proving that it was only a display issue and not a boot fail.

The setup involved installing Ubuntu Server 13.04 (Raring Ringtail) onto the server, which contained a new Supermicro X10SLM-F motherboard with an Intel C224 chipset.

After doing some research I found that the solution was to enable nomodeset in Grub. Because I had set up OpenSSH during Ubuntu install, I was able to connect to the server and do the following:

$ sudo nano /etc/default/grub

Find the line

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""

Change it to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"

And then enter the following commands into the terminal

$ sudo update-grub
$ sudo reboot

When the server rebooted, everything loaded as normal.