It may be closer to right than current Debian is.
Even the fallback vga graphics fails intermittantly.
What do you do when the failsafe system fails?
There might be some corruption in my Debian…
There are advantages in multiboot
Its a great learning exercise , but someday I have to get back to doing things.
Gentoo meets my longterm requirements… non systemd and rolling release.
Remind me of a scene from the movie C.H.U.D. Michael Gross is a “prepper” and has a backup generator go out and then the lights come back on and he says, “Backup, backup generator.” 
@kovacslt
The file etc/modprobe.d/amd64-microcode-blacklist.conf in my Debian11
# The microcode module attempts to apply a microcode update when
# it autoloads. This is not always safe, so we block it by default.
blacklist microcode
so to my reading it has not blacklisted anything except a module called microcode
no nvidia or amd stuff
A live Debian11 DVD ( with nonfree), boots and runs perfectly.
I did the install… alongside my existing Debian, not on top of it.
The installed Debian11 does not boot at all
The install made a further mess. The install script insists on writing grub somewhere… it does NOT offer an option to skip installing grub. I refused to point it to either of my disks, but it went ahead anyway and wrote it somewhere?
After that nothing booted. I discovered that the Debian 11 install had changed the UUID of my swap partitions. So after fixing that , I could boot Void and Devuan, but Solus failed, and both Debians failed.
I have searched and found that the install wrote grub on the efi system partition of at least one disk, thereby disabling Solus , which relies on that for booting. I should be able to recover the original efi system partition(s) from backup.
That leaves me with 2 non-booting Debians, instead of one.
I temporarily shifted control of grub away from Debian to Void, so I could control things. Why Solus uses the efi partition, I dont know… I boot in legacy mode.
What next I am not sure?
There is merit in backups.
@nevj
Sounds like it is time to reformat and start over!!! Can’t see where Debian 11 is going to help.
Agree. I need a stable fallback distro, but it has to cope with amdgpu.
At tbe moment Void is filling that role.
MX21.2.1_x64"ahs" looks interesting.
Gentoo doesnt cut it for that… it is too experimental. It should be the next experiment not the stable base, at least in this machine with the new graphics card.
I tried MX, just wasn’t my cup of tea.
It is how one installs Gentoo, which makes it stable or experimental.
From what I read Gentoo has support for your RX6400, just set the VIDEO_CARDS=“amdgpu radeonsi” and that will let mesa drive your graphics.
If I can help, just message me.
My current project is a Dell XPS 17 laptop, that was given to me by my son. I have it broke down at the moment, replacing the charging adater. Come to find out this thing is able to run two drives. Thinking on leaving the spinner drive and install a 240GB SSD in the other slot. Probably will install Gentoo on that SSD. Wish me luck getting it back together.
Yes, to a degree. Its too high a maintenance load to be a stable base, especially with me being inexperienced. I will get Gentoo in the mix, but not as the fallback distro.
In some ways this will be an exciting new direction, a new mix of distros, and lots of new things to learn.
Thanks for help offer. It will be needed.
Hi @nevj ,
Sorry to read about your bad experience with installing.
At the end you choosed a target. What was it?
That’s quite unusual.
I see here contradictions. Are you sure you boot legacy?
Are you sure, Debian install was boot in BIOS mode?
I doubt. If it wrote GRUB to an EFI partition, I’m quite sure the installer was not boot up in legacy (BIOS) mode.
According to that Debian forum post, the RX6400 still does not work with Debian stable, even with backports being used.
I checked here , there’s no firmware for Navi24 nor Beige goby.
However in Bookworms firmware package I see Beige goby present, which sounds promising.
So I think Debian 12 will have native builtn support for that card, Debian 11 still doesn’t has it backported.
Sad news.
If I wanted to use that card in my Debian system, I’d try to use the backported kernel (as you did), AND steal the firmwares from Bookworm’s packages.
That’s easy to do 2 steps.
If that wouldn’t work, I would strictly follow the advice here, and see how it goes.
Of course using another distro, which has the support already, is an option too.
Ubuntu and derivatives are based on Debian testing (Bookworm now), they are under develeopment, so they evolve much faster.
I’m sorry, that I mislead you believing bullseye-backport would have the support for that card. It turned out, the required support still not landed there. I’m sure it’s going to be there some day, however I can’t say when this is going to happen.
If you want your previous Debian back:
Theoretically you could restore it with your backup.
You can rsync the data back.
However, this won’t ensure it will boot, because you’d need to restore GRUB as well. Probably run an update-grub (or equivalent, what Gentoo has) from one of your working booting Linuxes will do it.
You are right. My machine is a very early UEFI setup.
It has 2 settings
Legacy and EFI Compatable.
It will boot with either setting. It happened to be on EFI compatable when I did the install
There is a history. It originally came with one disk booting efi with windows and the other disk booting legacy with Linux. I got rid of Windows and converted both disks to gpt and legacy boot… or so I thought. Each disk has a bios-boot partition AND an EFI system partition. I have 2 grubs installed ( I think) in the bios-grub partitions, one controlled by Void, and the other was controlled by Debian. Anything is possible. I need to clean it up.
Dont worry. It was a good suggestion to try a fresh install. I got the answer… I cant use Debian11 at the moment without extensive updates. I needed the boot cleanup anyway and it is happening.
At the end you choosed a target. What was it?
I left it blank, because I wanted no grub install at all.
It went ahead anyway.
Regards
Neville
Thanks for detailing that.
Because Debian 11 controlled grub on obe dusk and ran my printers and email, I need to find a femporary alternative, as you suggest.
I am going to try MX-21.2.1_x64 “ahs”, because it is very Debian-like… I have used MX before. I need to set that up first priority… or at least after sorting the booting mess.
But I will keep my Debian 11 with the kernel backport, and try the path you describe. It will be a learing experience, if nothing else. Someday soon Debian 12 may come along, then I can reconsider my options.
Thank you for the help and advice
Regards
Neville
@kovacslt .
I should elaborate
It first asked which disk to write grub on, and it offered sda, sdb, or eksewhere.
I chose elsewhere, then it asked me to enter something. I entered nothing , and pressed the key to go on, and it installed grub I dont know where, but I suspect in the EFI partition of one disk.
When I cleanup this mess, do you think I should use Legacy or EFI Compatable boot setting? I need to be consistent. Some distros, eg Solus and Clear Linux, seem to expect EFI, so maybe that is the best choice.
I think at the moment I may have grub installed in both the bios-grub partition and the EFI system partition, at least on one disk. Nothing actually wrong with that, But I need to understand what is there and how to control it.
I have actually experimented with making USB drives bootable by both legacy and EFI. You just write grub on them twice in 2 places. There has to be some distro that controls each copy of grub. I couLd do that on the hard disks, or maybe I already accidentally have it! It will boot with either the legacy or efi compatable setting.
I still have my Previous Debian. I did not install on top of it. I used a different partition.
All my distros and data are intact. I just made a mess of the boot system. At worst I can erase both the EFI system partitions, do
grub-install --target= i386pc /dev/sda
from Void
and I should have a pure legacy boot system on sda.
I was thinking of an SSD too. Should speed up Gentoo.
I like EFI because it allows me to use many primary partitions, which I can freely resize and move around. Not that I do it every day, but if I need to resize (grow ) a primary partition, where an extended takes up all other space, it’s a pain.
So EFI gives more freedom - I think.
Legacy BIOS mode is simpler.
I’d go for EFI.
My not so new Lenovo Z51-70 booted much quicker when I switched to EFI.
(The hardwre did not change).
My desktop couldn’t boot BIOS mode, so in the long run switching to EFI boot seems to be unavoidable anyway.
Faster drive speeds up IO. An SSD can add tremendeous speed enhancement.
You mean EFI combined with GPT partitioning?
I do have GPT. Yes it is much more flexible.
Yes, I think I should look to the future and learn to use EFI properly.
Thank you.
I did not think you could mix legacy boot with gpt or uefi boot, gpt, as for as I know requires uefi boot. Now you can run a gpt disk, in legacy boot, as long as it is not a boot drive. Now one can do an mbr disc, with at least one primary boot partition and a extended partition, broken up in several partitions.
That is why I have chosen gpt and uefi boot on this machine, it is also a learning expereience.