Re: loader.efi on NUC14 locking on reboot

I have sadly apparently at least temporarily lost the ability to 
reproduce the behavior.


The display in question is a samsung 4k tv, it has some weird bugs, one 
of which is that it sometimes refuses to recognize inputs as active. the 
only fix for this is pull the power, regular 'off' doesn't work (this 
isn't about the NUC14 or FreeBSD, other devices can be affected too).  
Well, after this it stopped happening.


I don't think this is the TV causing it (other then giving loader a 
display state it cannot handle, or perhaps the BIOS/UEFI).  Even before 
the kernel handoff loader was 'acting weird' with the display, it would 
display the autoboot countdown, but not the splash image nor the menu, 
and then when the countdown finished previous loading messages were 
visible.  It seems loader may be using multiple screen viewports?


Anyway, I cannot repro it currently, from previous experience this 
situation WILL come back on this TV, just need to wait a bit; I will 
implement suggestions then and even try to post a video of it.

On 9/27/25 11:11, Toomas Soome wrote:
>
>> On 27. Sep 2025, at 05:57, David Cross <david@crossfamilyweb.com> wrote:
>>
>> I recently replaced a NUC11 with a NUC14.  The display was not properly supported on FreeBSD-14, so I decided to give 15 a go (on 14 there was a lot of flickering as I had to hand modify the kmod-drm modules to support the PCI-ids of the display).
>>
>>
>> Under 14 everything (minus the flickering) worked fine.  Under 15 the machine will periodically NOT boot with loader.efi.
>>
>>
>> The pattern is as follows:
>>
>> 1. COLD boot, from unplugged, appears to NOT boot
>>
>> 2. Reboot without unplugging (5 seconds hard off power switch, but standby power is still there), it boots.
>>
>> 3. warm reboot (shutdown -r now) NO BOOT.
>>
>>
>> The WAY it doesn't boot is as follows, it will display the autboot countdown, and then:
>>
>> Of note there are NO other messages on the screen at this point, which is incorrect, because when it DOES boot, even BEFORE this point there are the splash logo and the boot menu,
>>
>>
>> Booting [/boot/kernel/kernel]...
>>
>> staging 0x5800...000 (not copying) tramp 0x64287000 PT4 0x6427e000
>>
>> Start @ 0xfff...802f7280 ...
>>
>> Loading splash ok
>>
>> (HANGS)
>>
>>
>> A few tings about this, when it displays these messages there is NO splash, just the text.  HOWEVER, when it DOES boot successfully there is a splash, and I THINK the 'loading splash' is actually earlier, it is as if these messages are hidden'.
>>
>>
>> The other major difference is when it does boot correctly the resolution of the screen is MUCH less (like 640x480 equivalent), when it hangs it is running at a higher res.
>>
>>
>> I have NO drm modules loaded currently between boots.
>>
>>
>> This is on 15.0-ALPHA built from src as of yesterday night. -march=alderlake, -O2, nothing else.  Worked fine on 14.2.
>>
>>
>> Suggestions?
>>
>>
> What I did notice, you want to make sure the console terminal size is not getting “too big”. That is, check COLUMNS/LINES from kenv and try to set larger font to see if it is still bugged.
>
> rgds,
> toomas
>
>