Troubleshooting

This page contains some fixes for common issues with Wii-Linux.

Gumboot isn't loading! What's going on?

Depends on what's wrong with it.

• Black screen? Immediate reboot? Check if you have BootMii installed correctly.
• Blinking disk slot? Check if your SD Card is inserted properly, this means that BootMii can't find bootmii/ppcboot.elf, bootmii/armboot.bin, or its config.
• HBC / Priiloader won't load BootMii? Check if BootMii is installed correctly as an IOS - these can't load BootMii as boot2.

I get an error from Gumboot trying to load the kernel! What's wrong?

Check that you copied all of the files properly. It's possible that the kernel was corrupted while copying it. Try putting the SD Card in a computer, deleting wiilinux/vX_X.krn, and copying it out of the SD Files archive.

How do I modify the kernel arguments?

Open the kernel binary (wiilinux/vX_X.krn) in a hex editor, search for the ASCII text root=, then user overwrite mode to modify the arguments (tip: overwrite the large chunk of padding, that's what it's there for!)

The kernel seems to load (green bar on Gumboot), but then the screen stays on garbled colors, fully black, or black screen with the loader text! What's wrong?

This could be tons of things.

• If you're getting the garbled colors, it means the kernel failed to initialize very early on, before initializing the AVE-RVL.
• If you're getting a fully black screen without even the loader text at the top, that means that it failed after initializing the AVE-RVL, gcnfb, but before displaying the loader text.
• If you're getting a black screen with the loader text at the top left, it means the kernel has initialized a decent bit, but something isn't working. Try setting the kernel arguments (see the previous answer, right above this), replace the loglevel=x parameter with loglevel=7 to get full kernel logs on the screen, or check a USB gecko.

For all of these, having a USB Gecko would be very beneficial.

I see the login screen, but I can't type on my USB keyboard, what gives?

Check your USB keyboard connection, is it plugged in, and plugged in all the way? (more common than you might think) Try pressing num lock/caps lock/scroll lock, do the lights come on? If not, check if your keyboard is just dead (plug it into another device). If you've verified all of this, and it still doesn't work, ask for assistance.

Why is my WiFi so slow? I can't even get 1MB/s!

That's just how it is. It's hardware limitations, that's how it is in all standard Wii software as well, the Wii's WiFi chipset is just that slow. I highly recommend using USB Ethernet, or a supported USB WiFI adapter wherever possible if you care about speed.

Why isn't [some package name here] in the ArchPOWER repos?

I don't maintain the ArchPOWER repos, but I do maintain a small group of extra packages for ArchPOWER in a seperate repo. Ask me, I'll check for you, and build it if possible.

Why is logging in so slow?

Arch (and by extension, ArchPOWER) uses a fairly inefficient (though more secure) hashing algorithm for the password by default, that is quite slow on the Wii's mediocre CPU. If you'd like a better balance between security and speed, you can use SHA256 instead. Simply edit /etc/login.defs, then replace YESCRYPT with SHA256, then regenerate the password of each user. New rootfs's have this by default.

Why I get out-of-memory errors despite turning on a swapfile/swap partition?

This is a bug in the default Wii-Linux configuration that was shipped for quite some time, but eventually fixed. You can either: A) Update your system (the latest wii-linux-meta fixes it) B) Delete, or fix, /etc/udev/rules.d/99-zram.rules to not have 100M allocated

Can I play [insert game here] on Wii Linux?

Short Answer: No. Stop trying. You don't want to get it to work.
Long answer: Well.... technically, yes. It's very likely compiled for x86, so it'll need to be emulated. That's already unusably slow on the Wii, but let's carry on. There's no graphics acceleration of any kind, so it'll be rendering on the emulated x86 CPU, and then drawing to the screen w/ native PPC code, but still on the CPU So, yes, it may execute the game's code, technically, but you sure as hell won't be "playing" it.