Boot File Testing for SR

[Psycholiquid]

Surface Test with no USB NIC and using file 05_ipxe.efi I get the following:

It will get to the menu without issue. I am choosing the last option to Compatibility to see it hit the init file and the following happens:

Never gets past init.xz

[Psycholiquid]

Surface Test with USB NIC and using file 04_ipxe.efi I get the following:

It will get to the menu without issue. I am choosing the last option to Compatibility to see it hit the init file and the following happens:

Works without issue, eth0 doesn’t pick up on DHCP but secondary USB NIC does and works to image or register hosts.

[Psycholiquid]

EFI timer test:

[Psycholiquid]

EFI 01 Timer Test:

but I have the hsa_usb_nic=1 still on

[Psycholiquid]

@psycholiquid and DHCP failed (This doesnt have the secondary NIC plugged in

[Psycholiquid]

svn5835_ipxe: no hang on init.xz

[Psycholiquid]

svn5836_ipxe: hang on init.xz

[Psycholiquid]

svn5901_ipxe: hang on init.xz

[Psycholiquid]

svn5902_ipxe: hang on init.xz

[Psycholiquid]

svn5918_ipxe: hang on init.xz

[Tom Elliott]

Not understanding what the bug is here.

[Psycholiquid]

He requested me to test them and put weather it hung or not.

@Sebastian-Roth

[Psycholiquid]

svn5938_ipxe: hang on init.xz

[Tom Elliott]

Are you just trying to find out when Surface Pro booting became an issue? From the boot file you should post the ipxe version. It appears in the “ipxe (abcdef)” of the connection request. The parenthesis should show us the version when it worked.

[Psycholiquid]

Not sure exactly what SR is looking for, he just requested that I try each file and let him know the result as posted. Using his template.

We have about the same time frame work wise so I told him I would test them all for him today

[Psycholiquid]

This isn’t a resolvable post really. More of a testing platform post for him to see what his files are doing.

[Sebastian Roth]

@psycholiquid Thanks again for the testing. Looks good to me.

@Tom-Elliott This was intended to double check that this issue is not something we have caused (e.g. by some specific header config or what). So beside testing all the iPXE git commits I also grabbed our original binaries from SVN to see if the results match up. See the spread sheet called 00_iPXE svn commits here and you’ll understand what I am up to with this. The results are consistent with what you see in 00_iPXE git commits: Seems iPXE git commit 757ab983811ac8d3f65efb65b8309738bd33bea3 was the first to show this problem - hangs on init.xz.

So now we can get to the interesting part of finding out what exactly does cause the issue. So I compiled a debug enabled (DEBUG=efi_timer) version and it kind of seems like the issue went away with debug enabled.

@Psycholiquid Just to make I compiled a binary from the exact same source but without the debug - please test 02_efi_timer_ipxe_wo_debug.efi when you have time and see if that hangs or not.

PS: I moved most of the other testing posts here as well.

[Sebastian Roth]

@Psycholiquid And here I have another one for you to test as well. I won’t be around today. So I hope you can make it work and we get some more results from that. Take a USB key, format as FAT32 (!) and create the directories EFI\boot\ (or EFI/boot/ if doing this on linux) and copy the iPXE binaries to that directory. Now first rename 02_efi_timer_ipxe.efi to bootx64.efi, pop that into the surface and boot from the USB key. See what you get. Hang on init.xz or not. Then go back and rename bootx64.efi to 02_efi_timer_ipxe.efi and 02_efi_timer_ipxe_wo_debug.efi to bootx64.efi and try again.

[Psycholiquid]

I am out today but will do this first thing tomorrow morning.

[Psycholiquid]

02_efi_timer_ipxe.efi: No hang on init.xz

Hating you right now and you must feel in my pain of how small the text is on these dang Surfaces. 4K FTL