Insprion 14z - UEFI boot hangs at purple screen if NIC activated

[mlaverdiere]

Here's my weird problem, with a UEFI Ubuntu 12.10 64 bits installation on an Inspiron 14z ultrabook with an integrated Atheros AR8162 ethernet card (NIC).

If the AR8162 card is enabled in BIOS, Ubuntu won't load, as it will hang in a blank purple screen or, in recovery mode, at "loading initial ramdisk". If the AR8162 card is disabled, it will boot just fine. The problem is that I need an ethernet connection...

What is strange is that I'm able to boot Ubuntu in legacy mode with the AR8162 enabled in BIOS and this card is working just fine with the alx module available in compat-wireless package (see: http://askubuntu.com/questions/15722.../231715#231715). The only thing is that I want to keep dual booting with Win8, so UEFI Grub installation is mandatory.

Any idea someone on how to boot Ubuntu 12.10 in UEFI mode, with a working AR8162 card?

Thanks.

[oldfred]

There are some bug reports with work arounds.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/927782
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...x/+bug/1046435

[mlaverdiere]

Thanks oldfred, but the problem is not that I can't make the AR8162 work (again, it works pretty well with alx module when I boot in BIOS legacy mode). The problem is that I have to disable the card in BIOS if I want to boot in UEFI mode.

I'm just wondering if there could be a Kernel boot parameter that I could use to tell the kernel not to probe for this card and/or not to activate it, as I may be able, if the boot completes successfully, to activate it later, just by modprobing the alx module...

[mlaverdiere]

Bump!

[oldfred]

Are there any settings in UEFI menu?

I think both BIOS or UEFI write some info in RAM or drive for system to use when booting. Is it then UEFI not writing the correct or same info or Ubuntu cannot find it as it is somehow a bit different? Seems like a bug somewhere?

Do you get the same info from these from both systems or is there some subtle differenece?

lspci -v
dmesg | grep eth
# Plug in Ethernet cable and see if errors:
dmesg | tail -n10
# Check by chipset:ie e1000e
sudo lsmod | grep e1000e

[takuie]

Try updating bios, dell doesn't always ship with latest version for some reason.

[rktesser]

Any news on this issue?
I have the last bios version (from 2 days ago), and this problem is still present.

There's bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...2/+bug/1093472 , but no hint to a possible solution (besides disabling secure boot) until now.

[rktesser]

Sorry. Double post. I don't know how to delete it.