Debian 13: Fresh install dual boot Axioo Hype 5 AMD X6 using usb flash disk with ventoy boot manager installed

Spesification Axioo Hype 5 AMD X6:

• Ryzen™ 5 6600H & grafis Radeon™ 660M
• 16GB DDR5 RAM & 512GB SSD Gen 3

Shrink your windows 11 partition. We need 84 GB free space. 80 GB for debian / ext4 and 4 GB for swap. We do need to reserve 500 MB for ESP (EFI System Partition), windows 11 already create it.

Use windows disk manager and shrink partition. Fill

Enter the amount of space in MB 84000 MB

It is good practice to separate partition for windows system and application, and user data partition.

To install Ventoy boot manager in flash disk follow this.

Insert your USB flash disk contain Debian 13 net installer and ventoy installed. Press and hold “Shift” and restart windows. Unpress shift after laptop restarted.

Select “Use Device” and choose USB flash disk to boot.

Ventoy boot manager will give you any iso file you stored on flash disk if any. Choose debian, select “Boot in normal mode”.

Debian installer started, follow the instruction. You need an internet connection to install the xfce desktop environment. 

At the partition section, choose “Manual”. Create 80 GB type “ext4” mount / and 4 GB type “Swap”. Write change to disk.

Beware, there is a USB flash disk appear in the partition menu. It is shown as “SCSI1 (0.0.0) (sda)” on my laptop.

In package manager, I choose 

• Xfce
• Standard system utility

For special purpose installation choose debian blend. Release of debian pure blend can be read on www.debian.org/blends/.

Finally, restart your laptop. Press F2 to enter bios. At boot menu, select debian boot manager first and then windows. Debian grub has the option to enter windows not vice versa.

If you wish, to select windows as default grub selection, edit /etc/default/grub

GRUB_DEFAULT=2

Save it and run

# update-grub

Debian 13: Using Ventoy to create bootable flash disk for multiple ISO

Download ventoy from www.ventoy.net, choose tar.gz. At this documentation wrote, it was ventoy-1.1.07-linux.tar.gz.

Extract it here, it will create directory ventoy-1.1.07. You can move directory from download to your home.

To avoid any typo or wrong device storage, it is recommended to use GUI. Insert you new or unused flash disk and open ventoy GUI, from terminal

$ cd ventoy-1.1.07/
$ ./VentoyGUI.x86_64&

It will ask root/sudo password. Click Install and you will get warning all data will be destroyed and flash disk will be formatted. Wait until finish.

Unmount your flash disk. Remove and reinsert your flash disk. You can add your iso file into your flash disk.

Note: Do not store your iso files too deep under subdirectory. 

Sample Directory:

Ventoy
-- debian
   -- debian-13.1.0-amd64-netinst.iso
-- windows
   -- 

Note:  size of debian-13.1.0-amd64-netinst.iso is more then 700MB which it is not fit into CD ROM anymore.

Use flash disk USB 3.0 or above. I use Adata flash disk USB 3.0.

It is hard to find CD or DVD in Indonesia.  Almost software is distribute directly from cloud, no disk media anymore. Some provide flash disk installer in part of package.

 

 

Debian 13: solving error ring 2 stalled on HP 15-AF109AX AMD A8-7410 APU Radeon R5

Laptop:

AMD A8-7410 APU Radeon R5 GCN 1.2 (Spectre)
HP 15-AF109AX 

symptom: Screen flickering continuously at some interval  time

Dmesg error:

[ 3806.507278] radeon 0000:00:01.0: ring 2 stalled for more than 29348msec
[ 3806.507310] radeon 0000:00:01.0: GPU lockup (current fence id 0x000000000000038f last fence id 0x0000000000000390 on ring 2)

Which non free firmware? These are generation AMD Graphics Processor

Use radeon for older then GCN and RDNA

Use amdgpu for Graphic Core Next/GCN generation

1. GCN 1.0 Radion HD 7000
2. GCN 2.0 Radeon 200
3. GCN 3.0 Radeon 300
4. GCN 4.0 Radeon 400/500/600
5. GCN 5.0 Radeon RX Vega, Radeon VII

Use  ROCm for RDNA

1. RDNA 1 Radeon RX 5000
2. RDNA 2 Radeon RX 6000
3. RDNA 3 Radeon RX 7000
4. RDNA 4 Radeon RX 8000 

Install firmware, you need add non-free repository

# apt-get install firmware-amd-graphics  

Check firmware loaded

# lspci -k | grep -A 3 VGA
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Mullins [Radeon R4/R5 Graphics] (rev 45)
    Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 80cc
    Kernel driver in use: radeon
    Kernel modules: radeon, amdgpu

or

# lspci -nn | grep VGA


The Mullins Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), which include the Radeon R4/R5 Graphics, use the GCN 1.1 architecture.  Googling for yours if necessary. Create/Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-radeon.conf 

Section "Device"
    Identifier "AMD Graphics"
    Driver "amdgpu"
    Option "TearFree" "true"
EndSection

If your card is GCN 1.0 and 1.2 ("Southern Islands" or "Sea Islands" cards) , for potentially better performance and Vulkan support, you need to add kernel parameter. Edit /etc/default/grub and add parameter

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.cik_support=1"

update grub

# update-grub update-grub

Example old AMD Graphic

• Wrestler [Radeon HD 6310] 

google-chrome use gpu acceleration, this can also causing ring 2 stalled. Disabling google-chrome gpu accelerated.

$ google-chrome-stable --disable-gpu --disable-software-rasterizer

Create script to run start_chrome.sh

#!/bin/bash
google-chrome-stable --disable-gpu --disable-software-rasterizer "$@" &

Make it runnable

$ chmod 764 ./start_chrome.sh


 

Debian 13: using systemd-resolved to replace old way to resolving dns

Install systemd-resolved 

# apt-get install  systemd-resolved

Enable it

# systemctl enable systemd-resolved

Old fashion /etc/resolv.conf 

# Generated by NetworkManager
nameserver 45.90.28.186
nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 1.1.1.1

Change/Edit configuration file /etc/systemd/resolved.conf 

DNS=45.90.28.186 8.8.8.8 1.1.1.1
DNSOverTLS=yes

Optional

DNS=45.90.28.186 8.8.8.8#dns.google 8.8.4.4#dns.google 2001:4860:4860::8888#dns.google 2001:4860:4860::8844#dns.google 1.1.1.1#cloudflare-dns.com 1.0.0.1#cloudflare-dns.com 2006:4700:4700::1111#cloudflare-dns.com 2606:4700:4700:1001#cloudflare-dns.com
DNSOverTLS=yes 

Enable systemd-resolved in Network Manager, edit /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf 

[main]
plugins=ifupdown,keyfile
dns=systed-resovled

Restart Network Manager

# systemctl restart NetworkManager

Restart systemd-resolved

# systemctl restart systemd-resolved


Test it

# nslookup duckduckgo.com
Server:        127.0.0.53
Address:    127.0.0.53#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    duckduckgo.com
Address: 20.43.161.105

Done. This configuration can be used to protect your dns resolved from dns query hijacking. 

Handy diagnostics guide:  

Dig

# dig duckduckgo.com @1.1.1.1 +short
safe.duckduckgo.com.
202.169.44.80

Nslookup

# nslookup duckduckgo.com 8.8.8.8
Server:        8.8.8.8
Address:    8.8.8.8#53

Non-authoritative answer:
duckduckgo.com    canonical name = safe.duckduckgo.com.
Name:    safe.duckduckgo.com
Address: 202.169.44.80
Name:    safe.duckduckgo.com
Address: 2404:8000:11:2::2 

Whois

# whois 202.168.44.80 
% [whois.apnic.net]
% Whois data copyright terms    http://www.apnic.net/db/dbcopyright.html

% Information related to '202.168.0.0 - 202.168.63.255'

% Abuse contact for '202.168.0.0 - 202.168.63.255' is 'hostmaster@tpgtelecom.com.au'

inetnum:        202.168.0.0 - 202.168.63.255
netname:        TPG-AU
descr:          TPG Internet Pty Ltd.
country:        AU
org:            ORG-TIPL2-AP
admin-c:        TH178-AP
tech-c:         TH178-AP
abuse-c:        AT937-AP
status:         ALLOCATED PORTABLE
remarks:        Australian Internet Service Provider (ISP)
remarks:        http://www.tpg.com.au

Curl

# curl -I https://www.duckduckgo.com
curl: (7) Failed to connect to www.duckduckgo.com port 443 after 4129 ms: Could not connect to server

Note: curl and whois showing duckduckgo.com directing to wrong address.

Debian 13: UEFI partition during installation process

Begin in 2011, computer manufacturers were moving to use UEFI and left BIOS. Today, it is mandatory for system with UEFI to have separate partition for EFI System Partition / ESP. 

ESP contain boot loader to start operating system. One ESP may contain some boot loader for different operating system. Size of ESP for windows and Debian is 500MB to avoid problem when update occurred. It means for multi OS with different boot loader, ESP partition required bigger size.

During Debian installation, at step configure partition, create:

• size: 500 MB or bigger
• type: "EFI System Partition (ESP)", "EFI System Partition" or similar

All partitions required in Debian 13 system are:

1. ESP: 500MB or bigger, will marked boot sector 0xEE
2. Swap: 2 times physical memory. IMO, for physical memory more then 16GB, swap size equal to physical memory or less.
3. root partition for single point mount /, or custom partition.

There are 3 types boot process and its year period:

1. BIOS: old PC
2. BIOS + GPT PC 2000-2020 
3. ESP + GPT PC > 2020