Tablet with WINDOWS 10 and USB-LAN SMC 7500 adapter

[george1421]

@AndrewG78 What I’m speculating is that iPXE is miss-identifying the target computer. We have seen this on some tablets where the processor is a 64 bit system, but its locked in 32 bit mode by the manufacturer.

While you have a workaround. I’m interested in the code patch I provided for refind… but if ipxe is miss-identifying the target system, it will still call the wrong refind.

I’m wondering if you could try something for me on your hardware. Reset things so you get the ipxe error with the “chainloading failed, hit ‘s’ for the ipxe shell”.

At this message press s to get the ipxe shell. Then key in

1. show platform
2. cpuid --ext 29 if the short method doesn’t return anything then you can use this one cpuid --ext 29 && echo x64 || echo x32

[AndrewG78]

@george1421
Well this is really strange, ipxe thinks this is 64 bit architecture

[george1421]

@AndrewG78 excellent, we see that iPXE is thinking its a 64 bit system. That’s why things didn’t work out of the box.

I’m more curios now, what model tablet is this? What CPU does it report on the tin?

[AndrewG78]

@george1421
Inari 10 2GB

[george1421]

@AndrewG78 Thank you for the feedback. The atom processor IS 64 bits.

What I’m wondering is what operating system is installed on these tablets (in regards to the architecture)? Is that Win10 32 bit or Win10 64 bit?

According to what you captured from your dnsmasq server

Aug 20 10:55:28 localhost dnsmasq-dhcp[9463]: 2705516733 vendor class: PXEClient:Arch:00006:UNDI:003001

The system is telling your dnsmasq server that its a [Arch:00006] == “EFI IA32” computer. So at least the firmware thinks its a 32 bit computer.

[AndrewG78]

@george1421
Actually it is not WIN10 but WIN 8.1 ( my mistake in the topic)
It’s 32bit version.

[george1421]

@AndrewG78 said in Tablet with WINDOWS 10 and USB-LAN SMC 7500 adapter:

It’s 32bit version.

Ah that explains a bit. These did some electronic trickery to make a 64 bit processor think its a 32 bit one.

So you have a workaround for this system now? Can we close this issue because there is not much FOG can do with scripting around this?

[AndrewG78]

@george1421
Thanks for your support here. Yes we can close it.
Im just curious, what about refind in 32 and 64 bit ? Will this be supported in the next FOG release out of the box?

[george1421]

@AndrewG78 I need to talk to the developers about this. I feel yes since fog supports both 32 bit and 64 bit environments, that refind 32 bit needs to be included.

BUT I’m afraid it will not help you since your system is a 64 bit imposter, in that the CPU is reporting its 64 bits, but the hardware manufacturer has locked it in 32 bit mode. I looked through smbios to see if there was a system board setting that would report the data width so we could see if FOG can classify the system better. But there wasn’t anything I could see in smbios that reported we could key off of. I did see using dmidecode that the Processor section says its 64-bit capable (on my VM), but I don’t know if that would work correctly on your non-standard hardware.

[AndrewG78]

@george1421
OK that was clear to me. Just wanted to see if FOG can benefit somehow through this tough work with my tablet

[AndrewG78]

@george1421
Hi.
I have new FOG server with the newest 1.5.5 version(centos 7 ), but this time acting as a DHCP server(no dnsmasq anymore).
It works fine with regular laptop, but again on this Tablet I got strange tftp behavior.
I have checked tftp from windows machine and this file could be downloaded with no issues.
But on the tablet I got:

There is nothing in the /var/log/messages

[george1421]

@AndrewG78 This device is being detected as a 32 bit uefi system. So its being told to load ipxe from the i386-efi directory.

I would start out on the FOG server and ensure that ipxe.efi exists in `/tftpboot/i386-efi directory. the error message says it requested the file but the responded file size is 0.

Can we also assume that 192.168.1.1 is the IP address of your fog server?

[AndrewG78]

@george1421
It works now.
Im not sure what was that.
I have updated centos through the yum update
Then it did not even load fog interface on 192.168.1.1/fog but on localhost/fog only.
So I have installed FOG again like an update, it has finished with an error “DB backup failed”
But, surprisingly all works correctly now.
Thx again for your time,
I think something was not up to date in the system, but why did it work with regular laptop but didn’t with the tablet? Strange a bit.

[AndrewG78]

@george1421
Hi, I have another puzzle to solve
I had to run FOG server on another hardware. I obviously ran nmtui-edit and updateIP.sh community script.
And this time I have in logs
in.tftpd[12096] Error code 8. User aborted the transfer
in.tftpd[12097] Client 192.168.1.18 finished i386-efi/ipxe.efi

and Tablet freezes on this screen

[AndrewG78]

@george1421
Hi George,
Puzzle is solved now
Unfortunately version 1.5.5 has some issue /bug with 32bit version of init and kernel files.
I have manually downloaded binaries1.5.4.zip and overwrote bzImage32 and init_32.xz in the ipxe folder and all is working fine!!!
Could anyone check it and confirm my words?

[Sebastian Roth]

@AndrewG78 said in Tablet with WINDOWS 10 and USB-LAN SMC 7500 adapter:

Unfortunately version 1.5.5 has some issue /bug with 32bit version of init and kernel files.

Hmmm, that’s interesting. Good you had the idea to test the 32 bit versions from 1.5.4. But are you sure it’s the binaries or could it be this specific hardware you have? I am asking because I have just tested 32 bit (virtual machine) and it boots fine for me, no hang.

Sure we have changed a couple of things in the kernel and init from 1.5.4 to 1.5.5 but I am not aware of anything that would cause an issue for 32 bit systems.

Can you please try re-downloading the latest 32 bit init and kernel and see if those are working? Those are identical to the ones you get in binaries1.5.5.zip. I just checked the md5sums.

e6e447d01b986c339570dd39bac5ad7c  bzImage32
b1bd16a6c268589d214bafb5a4e51178  init_32.xz

If you have the same ones and they still fail I would ask you to test on another 32 bit client hardware.

[george1421]

@Sebastian-Roth Is there anything in the latest (1.5.5) inits that require the latest kernel? The idea is if redownloading the current inits don’t work, the try to roll back just the kernel to the 1.5.4 release. That way we could tell if its the inits or the kernel at fault here? From the picture it doesn’t appear that the kernel is even starting to run.

[Sebastian Roth]

@george1421 @AndrewG78 Yeah nice idea. Let’s see if we can figure out what is causing the hang. Unfortunately you can only use 1.5.4 init with 1.5.5 kernel but not the other way round (just tested). So please try that and also the suggested re-download of kernel and init. Please let us know the results.

[AndrewG78]

@Sebastian-Roth
OK, I have re-downloaded 1.5.5 binaries and have NO errors, so my conclusion was wrong- new 32bit init and kernel are OK.
So, the question in my mind is, how did it happen?
I try to recreate events from the memory.
During first installation I had an error, saying that Installer is not able to unzip binary files. I found that the zip had wrong size, so I removed it by hand and started the installation again and it was succeeded this time.
So, I suspect that the installer only checks if the files exist, but does not check if the checksums match.
I know it is to much works with md5sum, so I think all files should be overwritten(except configs) every time I run the installer.
What do you think?

[Sebastian Roth]

@AndrewG78 said in Tablet with WINDOWS 10 and USB-LAN SMC 7500 adapter:

So, I suspect that the installer only checks if the files exist, but does not check if the checksums match.

So far we don’t do hash sum checking for the binaries archive. I will add that soon as we have that for other binaries being downloaded already and shouldn’t take much effort to add.