Debugging Fedora UEFI boot problems on Intel DQ77MK

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

Hello,

I hope someone here can help me out..

I have a new Intel DQ77MK motherboard, based on the Intel Q77 chipset.
CPU is Intel Ivy Bridge i7-3770.
I'm running the latest BIOS version (0048), and UEFI boot is enabled in the BIOS.

I've tried UEFI booting the following operating systems from burned DVDR discs:

- Fedora 16 x64 DVD.
- Fedora 17 x64 DVD.
- Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.3 Server DVD. (Redhat Linux is supposed to be UEFI supported per the motherboard manuals).

UEFI boot fails with all of the listed operating systems. Symptoms:

- I get the Fedora/RHEL EFI boot menu, and I let it boot with the default options.
- I get text on the screen about allocating memory pages for Linux-EFI, loading VMLINUZ, etc.
- The screen goes empty/black, there's only a cursor blinking, and nothing happens..
- The boot failed or is stuck with nothing happening. I need to reset the box.

It looks like Linux kernel doesn't get started at all.. so it could be a UEFI firmware or a bootloader problem.

I'm actually expecting this is an Intel BIOS/UEFI firmware bug, 
because I've seen reports about UEFI boot problems on other Intel 7-series chipset aswell.

Does anyone know how to debug/troubleshoot UEFI boot problems? 

The motherboard in question has Intel vPro/AMT, so it has SOL, so I could use a serial console,
if there's a way to use it with UEFI/bootloader before Linux is started..

Any help is welcome!

Thanks,

-- Pasi