Ubuntu Xenial Installer hangs after a couple of minutes on Gigabyte MP30-AR0 (APM X-Gene 1)

[Ronald Maas]

When I start the Ubuntu Xenial Installer, the system freezes after the following error is displayed:

[ 92.033722] NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU #6 stuck for 22s! [swapper/6:0]

This usually happens 1 to 10 after I started the installer.

The installer was started from UEFI Shell using the command:

FS1:\EFI\BOOT\BOOTAA64.EFI

Expected to happen
-----------------
Be able to successfully finish the installation procedure

What actually happened
----------------------
Installer freezes and does not respond to any keyboard input. I need to cold restart the computer to get it to work again.

Hardware
--------
Gigabyte MP30-AR0 motherboard with APM X-Gene 1 processor flashed with TianoCore UEFI
Kingston KVR16LE11S8/4HB 16 GB ECC DDR3 DRAM
HGST Deskstar NAS 6 TB drive
Logitech USB keyboard

Software
----
Ubuntu Xenial Mini ISO downloaded from http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/dists/xenial/main/installer-arm64/current/images/netboot/mini.iso (dated 29-Mar-2016)
UBoot has been replaced by TianoCore UEFI using the steps described in: https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2016/03/08/gigabyte-mp30-ar0-flashing-uefi/

Notes
-----
Both Centos 7.2 and Debian Testing were successfully installed and running stable for multiple days.

[Ronald Maas (ronaldjmaas)]

I tested with latest Xenial arm64 Mini ISO from http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/dists/xenial/main/installer-arm64/current/images/netboot/mini.iso (dated 20-Apr-2016) and the same issue occurs again. Freeze occurs roughly 1 - 10 seconds after I started the installer.

When I passed kernel parameter acpi=off, this seems to resolve the freeze issue. Together with kernel parameters console=ttyS0,115200 and clk_ignore_unused I was able to finish the complete installation procedure.

[Ronald Maas (ronaldjmaas)]

Successfully able to install and start Ubuntu 16.04 on the MP30-AR0 board using the following work-around. Note a serial console is required:

1) After starting the installer using UEFI shell command FS1:\EFI\BOOT\BOOTAA64.EFI, select 'Install' menu item and click 'e' to invoke the Grub editor

2) Change the Grub menu entry:

setparams 'Install'

    set background_color=black
    linux /linux acpi=off clk_ignore_unused console=ttyS0,115200 --- quiet clk_ignore_unused console=ttyS0,115200
    initrd /initrd.gz

3) Type Ctrl-X to boot the kernel and start the installation process

4) After the installation completes, reboot the system. Now UEFI should automatically boot the kernel, and after a few error messages, the familiar Linux logon prompt should appear