Linux Support

[ericuco]

I am hoping this thread can be used for general support of Linux issues. I am very much a Linux novice but really like using it for my audio needs (HQP Desktop, Roon server, HQP NAA) and have been able to work through various installations and issues but there are lots of things I don't have a clue and need assistance beyond what you can get searching the Internet.

 

This thread is not for comparing the pro's and con's of the various OS (Linux vs Win10 vs macOS vs etc).

 

That said, I am currently struggling with Linux kernel upgrades. My fitlet2 computer is running Linux Mint using kernel "Linux 5.4.0-74-generic". According to @Miska, he generally recommends using the "low latency" version vs "generic".

 

How do I get the fitlet2 (Intel CPU) to boot using the "low latency" version? The fitlet2 is only used as my HQP NAA.

 

I am aware of the Grub2 tool to select which kernel to load on boot but it is my understanding that Linux typically boots using the latest version. The older kernels are available in case an upgrade doesn't work and you need to revert to an older version. That just happened to me when I tried to upgrade the kernel to 5.12 but there was some other piece of software (lib6??) that was required so I was getting BIOS errors on startup. I was able to revert back to the original version and remove the newer version.

 

Getting back to my question, can I simply select the "low latency" version in Grub2 (assuming "low latency" version exists on my computer) and my system will boot each time with the "low latency" version?

 

Or, should I install a newer kernel version (e.g. 5.8) and only install the "low latency" version from Mainline? With my bad experience from 5.12, just a bit hesitant to on how far up the version chain I can go before I have problems again.

 

 

Any assistance is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Miska]

Ubuntu should automatically pick up the lowlatency as default. If you are on Ubuntu 20.04, you should be already having 5.8 kernel.

 

If you install meta-package "linux-lowlatency-hwe-20.04" you get latest low latency "hardware enablement" kernel Canonical produces. Currently this is 5.8. If you keep your system up to date you get this updated regularly.

 

My custom kernel is currently 5.10 which is latest official long term maintenance Linux kernel:

https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html

 

[ericuco]

Thanks @Miska. This would be for Linux Mint on my fitlet2.

 

If I issue the following command:

 

sudo apt-get install linux-lowlatency-hwe-20.04

 

does that bring in and install everything I need?

 

The documentation mentions requirements:

 

linux-headers-lowlatency-hwe-20.04
linux-image-lowlatency-hwe-20.04

 

Do these need to be installed separately?

 

 

[Miska]

3 minutes ago, ericuco said:

sudo apt-get install linux-lowlatency-hwe-20.04

 

does that bring in and install everything I need?

 

Yes...

 

Quote

The documentation mentions requirements:

 

linux-headers-lowlatency-hwe-20.04
linux-image-lowlatency-hwe-20.04

 

Do these need to be installed separately?

 

No, the above meta-package will pull in those two meta packages, which in turn pull in the actual latest kernel image and header packages.

 

 

Note that this kind of assumes that you are on Mint 20.1 (ulyssa) which is based on Ubuntu 20.04 (focal).

 

[ericuco]

Thanks @Miska.

 

Well that was simply enough. Both my HQP Desktop (Ubuntu Studio 20.04) server and HQP NAA (Linux Mint 20 Ulyssa) have been upgraded to linux-lowlatency-hwe-20.04.

 

I wish I had asked earlier rather than spending a few hours last night messing with this.

[AudioDoctor]

I learned, after trying everything possible on my Linux journey, including building Arch from scratch, that keeping it simple results in significantly fewer headaches and everything works better and smoother as well. Now I run a very basic Ubuntu installation with just enough to run HQP and Roon Core, and it works flawlessly. Might there be a millimeter better sound out there someplace? sure. Do I care? nope.

[ericuco]

22 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

I learned, after trying everything possible on my Linux journey, including building Arch from scratch, that keeping it simple results in significantly fewer headaches and everything works better and smoother as well. Now I run a very basic Ubuntu installation with just enough to run HQP and Roon Core, and it works flawlessly. Might there be a millimeter better sound out there someplace? sure. Do I care? nope.

Totally agree with you. I now have three Linux computers (Ubuntu Studio, Ubuntu minimal installation, Linux Mint) that just have one purpose each - HQP Desktop, Roon server, HQP NAA. In general I don’t touch any of them other than for updates and upgrades. 
 

The most difficult thing I have had to do (besides this recent effort) was to edit the /etc/ fstab file to nsf mount my Synology NAS.

 

I didn’t think that updating a kernel would have been a big deal but it was proving to be a challenge until Miska bailed me out. System level stuff is always a bit of a fright because you can really screw things up. That said, with a few Linux installations under my belt now, the worse case is having to do a fresh installation which usually is not too bad.

 

In any case, I thought I would start this thread for any Linux questions that people have could be resolved by experts on AS.

[AudioDoctor]

1 hour ago, ericuco said:

In any case, I thought I would start this thread for any Linux questions that people have could be resolved by experts on AS.

 

It's a good idea. that was my advice for people having problems with Linux. Keep it simple. An endpoint for example, doesn't need to be anything more than a Raspberry Pi, for example.

[ericuco]

To switch off graphical interface on Ubuntu 20.04

 

sudo systemctl set-default multi-user

sudo reboot

 

to turn on

 

sudo systemctl set-default graphic

sudo reboot

 

also see

 

https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-disable-enable-gui-on-boot-in-ubuntu-20-04-focal-fossa-linux-desktop
 

I used this to turn off GUI on both my Roon server (Intel NUC - Ubuntu 20.04 minimal) and HQP NAA (fitlet2 - Linux Mint).

[giordy60]

great thread 👍
soon I would also like to install ubuntu 20.4
and here I could find the necessary info

[jabbr]

On 6/8/2021 at 9:13 PM, ericuco said:

The most difficult thing I have had to do (besides this recent effort) was to edit the /etc/ fstab file to nsf mount my Synology NAS.

 

SMB is rather efficient these days...

[ericuco]

1 minute ago, jabbr said:

SMB is rather efficient these days...

I had been using SMB but at one point had an issue with Roon constantly scanning files for days on end. The solution was to move over to NFS which I did and no issues.

[Quadman]

HELP.  I was installing ubuntu 20.04 on a new PC build.  I updated the package and installed updates so the kernel was 5.13.0-35.  The New PC is a intel based system i9-12900K with a asus Rog strix Z690 motherboard.  All is good up to this point.  I then prepped the PC to install @Miska new Ubuntu image 5.15.26, adding the necessary apps before installing the new image (rocm, libnuma-dev, gnupg2 and lingmpris) then I ran the necessary commands for the Linux headers and image and then installed.  When I reboot I get a black screen, no video output.  I had video output with kernel 5.13.0-35.  I tried to access the grub2 menu on reboot (single boot PC) and could not get to the opening screen where I can reboot in recovery mode.

 

What did I do wrong and how can I get video back.  I have installed Miska's image (5.15.16) on another PC with a nvidia GPU and I had zero issues with that.  The Intel UHD graphics 770 is not playing nice with 5.15.26.

 

Thank you!

[Miska]

3 minutes ago, Quadman said:

I tried to access the grub2 menu on reboot (single boot PC) and could not get to the opening screen where I can reboot in recovery mode.

 

From GRUB boot menu, select Advanced Options and you can then select which kernel you want to boot. By default it picks up the kernel with highest version number.

 

If it goes past too quick due to timeout, keep tapping up/down arrow keys when machine is rebooting and GRUB menu will detect your key presses and disable the timeout.

 

3 minutes ago, Quadman said:

What did I do wrong and how can I get video back.  I have installed Miska's image (5.15.16) on another PC with a nvidia GPU and I had zero issues with that.  The Intel UHD graphics 770 is not playing nice with 5.15.26.

 

I have similar issues with AMD GPU, but not with Nvidia. Not sure what has changed in 5.15 for this to happen.

 

If you need my kernel instead of Ubuntu lowlatency-hwe kernel, you can also use the 5.10 version, which should work fine, at least works for my AMD GPU. You will just need to select it from the boot menu, since 5.13 as newer is the default.

 

[Quadman]

13 minutes ago, Miska said:

If you need my kernel instead of Ubuntu lowlatency-hwe kernel, you can also use the 5.10 version

Will 5.10 version support intel UHD770 graphics?  There is no nvidia GPU on this machine.

 

I finally got to the grub2 menu, selected advanced options and then tried to boot in Recovery mode for kernel 5.15.26 and the PC freezes at loading initial ramdisk...   so frustrating.

[Quadman]

38 minutes ago, Quadman said:

If you need my kernel instead of Ubuntu lowlatency-hwe kernel, you can also use the 5.10 version

I removed the new JL version 5.15.26 and installed the older 5.10 kernel, but when I reboot it reboots into the newest kernel version 5.13.0-35, not your 5.10 kernel.  How to set that kernel as default boot?

[Miska]

4 hours ago, Quadman said:

Will 5.10 version support intel UHD770 graphics?  There is no nvidia GPU on this machine.

 

I finally got to the grub2 menu, selected advanced options and then tried to boot in Recovery mode for kernel 5.15.26 and the PC freezes at loading initial ramdisk...   so frustrating.

 

You don't need to use recovery mode, just boot the 5.13 kernel and you are back to original.

 

[Miska]

3 hours ago, Quadman said:

I removed the new JL version 5.15.26 and installed the older 5.10 kernel, but when I reboot it reboots into the newest kernel version 5.13.0-35, not your 5.10 kernel.  How to set that kernel as default boot?

 

It is not very straightforward, because these get reordered on updates. But you can manually choose the right one.

 

If you want to change the default, you can edit /etc/default/grub like this

GRUB_DEFAULT="2>0"

This tells to auto-select item 2 from main menu and item 0 from the sub-menu.

 

Then you run "sudo update-grub" to update the bootloader configuration.

 

[Quadman]

Has anyone tried installing, Jussi's new Ubuntu kernel 5.15.26?  I have tried 2 different times, (PC is an i9-12900K) once with only intel UHD 770 graphics active and a second time with a small cheap Nvidia Geforce GT730 GPU as the graphics processor.  With the Nvidia, before installing Jussi's latest image, I upgraded the graphics driver to an Nvidia driver for this card.  In both instances rebooting after the install of 5.15.26 the PC reboots into a black screen, no video output.  When I reboot and go into grub and select another kernel 5.13 the PC boots into ubuntu and graphics are fine.  If I reboot again and go into grub and try to boot into 5.15.26 (recovery) the PC will not open to the recovery screen.

 

I just find it odd that two different graphics solutions (UHD 770 and GT730) both throw black screens.  My other PC has a i9-11900K CPU and an Nvidia rtx 3060 GPU and I run Jussi's ubuntu 5.15.16 image and I have zero issues.  I tried Jussi's 5.10.103 image (with the 12900K) and graphics work but the 12900K MB uses 6E wifi and the 5.10 kernel does not support 6E wifi and I have no ethernet in my listening room.

[ericuco]

Trying to install HQP networkaudiod (networkaudiod_4.5.0-57_amd64.deb) on my fitlet2 running Linux Mint 5.4.0-163 but keep getting error, something about dependency lib6 is missing. 
 

 

I have tried to research solution and asked @Miska for assistance but can’t find an answer.

 

 

IMG_1229.heic

[Miska]

11 minutes ago, ericuco said:

Trying to install HQP networkaudiod (networkaudiod_4.5.0-57_amd64.deb) on my fitlet2 running Linux Mint 5.4.0-163 but keep getting error, something about dependency lib6 is missing. 
 

 

I have tried to research solution and asked @Miska for assistance but can’t find an answer.

 

 

IMG_1229.heic 3.52 MB · 1 download

 

Do you have matching distro's?  Which version of Mint is that? What does "cat /etc/lsb-release" say? Which networkaudiod deb package did you download?

 

[ericuco]

2 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Do you have matching distro's?  Which version of Mint is that? What does "cat /etc/lsb-release" say? Which networkaudiod deb package did you download?

 

I downloaded the latest version of networkaudiod from here https://www.signalyst.eu/bins/naa/linux/jammy/

[Miska]

7 minutes ago, ericuco said:

I downloaded the latest version of networkaudiod from here https://www.signalyst.eu/bins/naa/linux/jammy/

 

Mint 21 is based on Jammy (22.04 LTS). Mint 20 is based on Focal (20.04 LTS).

 

For NAA use I would recommend for example HQPlayer OS image instead. Or minimal install of Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS. Running GUI desktop on a NAA is not recommended.

 

[ericuco]

Understand. I am trying to get DSD1024 to work on my Holo May. Using your HQP embedded OS (hqplayerd disabled) I can only get DSD512. This is booted from a USB stick and works great except no DSD1024.

 

So, perhaps I should install Ubuntu server then your additional piece (kernels) in order to make DSD1024 work?

[Jud]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

Running GUI desktop on a NAA is not recommended.

 

I'm happy using the command line on my NAA, but once in awhile (for example, easy point and click download of the latest networkaudiod - or will "sudo apt-get update" do that for me?) I like to have a GUI around, so yes, I'm running Mint (21) on it.