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We have COM express carrier with an on-board SSD. The SSD has Ubuntu 22.04 installed on it. I've installed the ECI xenomai kernel alongside the latest ubuntu 6.5.x kernel. Given that our board is COM Express, we can easily swap between various processors and have been doing so looking for the best price/performance ratio and of course, low latency.
I have two modules that I am currently testing, an i3-11100HE and an i7-9850HL. Since the SSD is on the base board, I'm loading the exact same version of Ubuntu, kernel and root file system regardless of the installed processor board.
The gen9 processor boots and runs the ECI kernel without any trouble at all. I'm having SMI issues but that is another subject. When I put the gen11 board on the carrier, it hangs at 'loading initramfs' when I select the ECI 5.15.x Xenomai kernel. If I select the stock 6.5.x kernel, it boots and runs fine.
I've searched for all possible reasons why it would hang at that point. It is a common thing and I've tried many, many solutions that others have had success with, all to no avail.
Can anyone help please?
Thanks,
Jim
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Hi,
Could you share:
- Your references to those steps (eg: url)
- Steps and commands that you used till the point of issue
Cordially,
Iffa
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I installed Ubuntu 22.04 on our carrier with the i7-9850HL COM Express Module installed. I can boot the stock Ubuntu kernel without difficulty. I then followed the instructions listed here: Download ECI — ECI documentation (intel.com)
I followed the instructions and installed the Intel ECI Xenomai kernel via the eci-realtime package. I rebooted to the Intel ECI Xenomai kernel and everything worked as expected, again, on the i7-9850HL.
I removed the i7-9850HL COM Express Module and installed an i3-11100HE COM Express Module. I can boot the stock Ubuntu kernel without difficulty on the i3-11100HE. I cannot, however, boot the Intel ECI Xenomai kernel on the i3-11100HE. It hangs on loading the initial ramdisk.
Regards,
Jim
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Did you try installing the ECI kernel when the 11th gen CPU was installed in the system instead of swapping the CPUs?
If yes, does this also cause the same issue?
Cordially,
Iffa
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I will try that and report back.
Regards,
Jim
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This time I installed Ubuntu 22.04 on a fresh SSD. I booted it to the stock kernel and followed the getting started instructions on eci.intel.com. all of the installation step completed without error. Upon reboot, it automatically tries to load the intel xenomai dovetail kernel and hangs at "Loading initial ramdisk . . ."
This is the identical failure as before.
Regards,
Jim
This is all that I see.
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HI,
thanks for confirming that.
We'll further investigate this.
Cordially,
Iffa
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Hi,
from our side, we were able to install and boot into kernel eci-xenomai without any issues .
Could you verify whether your system meets the minimum system requirements and the bios settings were updated per the documentation? (This is step 4 in the apt instructions page for ECI).
Cordially,
Iffa
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May I ask what processor(s) you are using for test?
I've had success installing and booting eci-xenomai with gen 6, 7, and 9 processors. However, using the exact same series of steps on gen 11 and gen12 processors, booting into eci-xenomai hangs as illustrated above. As an FYI, I've loaded Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on the gen11 and gen12 processors and it runs fine in stock form. Also, I have confirmed that the ECI version of the PREEMPT_RT kernel runs fine on this hardware as well.
On each of the systems, failing and not, I've adjusted the BIOS settings per your documentation. Again, I've had great success with eci-xenomai on various generation processors < gen11. In fact, I've been using our own home-built kernel and xenomai version 3.2.1 on Beckhoff IPC hardware for upwards of three years now and I know my way around the optimal BIOS settings, kernel command line parameters, core isolation, etc. What I don't know is how to debug this failure as it is very early in the boot sequence and there is no context from which to proceed.
Thinking that perhaps these newer systems require new versions of the kernel and xenomai, I cloned the linux-dovetail and xenomai-3 repositories from xenomai · GitLab (denx.de). I built linux-dovetail on branch 'v6.5-dovetail-rebase' and I built xenomai on branch 'master'. I built these with your config file setting recommendations. Also, I built these as deb packages so I could easily install them on various the hardware that I have available for testing. With this very recent kernel (v6.5.x) and the latest xenomai-3, I find that, again, gen11 and gen12 processors hang on loading initial ramdisk and that running on gen9 works as expected. I'm beginning to think this is a xenomai issue, not something to do with the eci-xenomai package.
Your thoughts?
Best Regards,
Jim
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Hi,
we tested that on Tiger Lake (11th Gen): i7-1165G7.
Generally, if your system fulfills the requirements which mentioned here, you should be able to implement the installation
Cordially,
Iffa
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Hi,
Intel will no longer monitor this thread since we have provided a solution. If you need any additional information from Intel, please submit a new question.
Cordially,
Iffa

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