bc250-console

A custom Bazzite GNOME (bootc) image for the AMD BC-250, built as a kid-friendly couch gaming console with remote parent administration. Recipes build with BlueBuild; the installer ISO comes from bootc-image-builder; installed consoles update over-the-air from this Gitea's container registry.

Image: git.lazypugs.com/ckoch/bc250-console-gnome:latest Recipe: recipes/bc250-console-gnome.yml

What it adds on top of bazzite-gnome:stable

Area	Change
GPU	cyan-skillfish-governor-smu (BC-250 DVFS governor, from the filippor COPR), enabled
Memory	ttm.pages_limit / ttm.page_pool_size kargs so the GPU can use the full 16 GB shared GDDR6
Remote admin	openssh-server (enabled); Sunshine auto-serves the kid's session to Moonlight; tailscaled enabled. (RDP via bc250-remote-setup exists but is blocked by a mutter/GFX1013 crash)
Console behavior	All suspend paths masked, no screen lock/dim, GNOME animations off — always on, always reachable
Kid experience	Steam Big Picture autostarts for the kid account only
Apps	First-boot flatpaks: ProtonUp-Qt, Heroic, RetroDECK, Prism Launcher (Minecraft), Chromium, Moonlight — Steam, Firefox, auto-updates already in the Bazzite base
Cloud gaming	GeForce NOW via a Chromium web-app shortcut (the native GFN app requires Vulkan video decode the BC-250 physically lacks — error 0xC0F11312). Moonlight client included for streaming from a home Sunshine host. Streams CPU-decode; keep to 1080p
Fixes	hhd.service masked (crash-loops on BC-250)
Docs	Parent manual baked at /usr/share/doc/bc250-console/OPERATIONS.md

Accounts

Build with build-console.sh + your console.env to bake real usernames, passwords, and display names directly into the ISO (see BUILD-CONSOLE.md). Without it, the ISO bakes the placeholder users from iso-config.toml: parent (admin/wheel) and kid (standard), passwords to change on first login. The kid's account can be renamed post-install (see OPERATIONS.md) — the Big Picture autostart follows CONSOLE_KID_USER in /etc/bc250-console.conf.

⚠️ The installer wipes the first disk with no prompts. Don't boot it on a machine whose disk you care about.

Documentation

• BUILD-CONSOLE.md — build the image, generate the ISO, publish OTA updates (verified podman and docker paths, with workarounds)
• OPERATIONS.md — day-2 admin: connecting, installing games remotely, updates/rollback, GPU tuning, health checks
• WIRING.md — PSU/mains wiring, J1000 pinout, power-switch design (AC rocker + AUTO_PWRON), fans, first power-on
• BIOS-FLASH.md — backup + flash the modded firmware via the J4004 header, then the VRAM/IOMMU settings (ROMs are local-only, not in this repo)

Hardware prerequisites (on the board, not in the image)

Modded BIOS (see mothenjoyer69/bc250-documentation), then BIOS settings: 512 MB dynamic VRAM, IOMMU disabled, auto power-on.

Known issues (found the hard way on real hardware)

All of these are worked around in this image; listed here for searchability and until fixed upstream.

• GNOME Remote Desktop (RDP/VNC) crashes the whole session on this GPU: gnome-shell SIGSEGV in meta_cursor_renderer_get_cursor via meta_screen_cast_monitor_stream_src_set_cursor_metadata (mutter 50.3, cyan-skillfish/GFX1013) the moment a client connects and requests cursor-metadata frames. MUTTER_DEBUG_DISABLE_HW_CURSORS=1 does not help. Workaround: Sunshine + Moonlight instead (baked). Upstream report to GNOME/mutter: pending.
• Sunshine crash-loops (SIGSEGV, exit 139) probing the Vulkan H.264 encoder on a GPU with no video-encode hardware, instead of falling through to the next encoder. Workaround: encoder = software seeded before first start (baked). Upstream report to LizardByte: pending.
• GeForce NOW's native Linux app cannot run — error 0xC0F11312: the client hard-requires Vulkan video-decode extensions and the BC-250's silicon has no VCN block at all. Unfixable at the driver level. Workaround: GFN via Chromium web app (baked shortcut).
• BlueBuild default-flatpaks@v1 notify: true breaks on multi-user systems: the post-install notification runs sudo -u with all human users newline-joined into one name, failing the whole install service. Workaround: notify: false. Upstream report: pending.
• Bazzite's bazzite-steam-bpm shows "ERROR: code=0; This is strange..." at login when Steam lingers from a previous session: a waitpid race on already-gone PIDs plus an if ! clobbering $?. Workaround: this image ships its own quit-and-wait wrapper.
• Cosmetic: amdgpu logs a wall of hpd(rx)/dal_irq errors at every boot on BC-250 — the display core probes IRQ sources this cut-down chip lacks. Harmless; every BC-250 does this.

Roadmap / hoped-for work

• File the four upstream bug reports above (coredumps and stack traces are in hand).
• In-home game streaming: Sunshine host VM (R730, RTX 3050 passthrough) serving the baked Moonlight client — self-hosted "GeForce NOW" at LAN latency. Fortnite stays on real GFN (Epic's anti-cheat policy).
• Thermal soak validation and GPU governor ceiling tuning (see OPERATIONS.md) once long gaming sessions accumulate.
• Retry GNOME RDP after a fixed mutter ships; retry native GFN if NVIDIA adds a software-decode fallback.
• Explicit non-goal: the experimental 40-CU unlock — this console stays on the stable 24-CU configuration.

Credits

Forked from 62fixolab/Latest-Bazzite-AMD-BC-250-Patched-Images, which builds on vietsman's patched images and filippor/cyan-skillfish-governor, on top of ublue-os/bazzite. The 40-CU experimental tooling from upstream is intentionally not included — this image stays on the stable 24-CU configuration.

MIT licensed — see LICENSE and NOTICE.