PXE Boot HP X2 210 (Hybrid tablet Windows 10 Pro)

[Sebastian Roth]

Great!!! Let’s see if this quick fix will be enough for you to capture and deploy those devices. I really hope it will as getting it fixed by HP or the BIOS vendor (Insyde) may take weeks. Please keep us posted as you try deployment as well.

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Sebastian-Roth Just done, I’ve uploaded image from first tablet I have prepared and deploy it on second one, everything seems fine
That’s cool ^^

[Wayne Workman]

Adding the HP X2 210 to the wiki of working devices, I will link it to this thread.

@Matthieu-Jacquart @Sebastian What was the boot file used? The version of FOG? The kernel? Exactly what model of USB adapter did you use? What was done to make this work?

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Wayne-Workman For now it seems to work only with modified bzImage given by Sebastian (bzImage_rb). No other change (stock ipxe.efi file), last svn used

@Wayne-Workman And network adapter is ASIX AX88772C. I’ll try to buy one USB 3.0, this one is just USB 2.0 an limited to 100Mb…

[Wayne Workman]

@Matthieu-Jacquart said:

I’ll try to buy one USB 3.0

Please let us know how that goes. We really need to get into the USB 3.0 stuff.

[Sebastian Roth]

@Wayne-Workman As Matthieu said this is only possible with the patched bzImage_rb. But it’s a quite ugly hack I think and I have absolutely no idea if this will cause issues on other devices. Up to now it looks like the freeze is caused by a bug in the UEFI firmware but we don’t have a clear confirmation yet. Will take some time. iPXE is definitely not an issue on these HP X2 210 tablets and therefore trunk version is fine except the linux kernel.

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Wayne-Workman I think we are going to buy this one (Realtek RTL8153).
http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/cat-5062_UE300.html
Any know issue with this chipset ?

[Sebastian Roth]

Try searching the forum for RTL8153. From what I know several people have trouble using RTL8153 based USB NICs even in BIOS legacy mode. I don’t think UEFI will be easier. Probably best to start a new discussion on this as it might be a long way to go just as this one was.

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Sebastian-Roth Ok, I’m going to this this one today : http://www.startech.com/Networking-IO/usb-network-adapters/USB-3-to-Gigabit-Ethernet-NIC-Network-Adapter~USB31000S
chipset ASIX AX88179

EDIT : Sh**t, Tablet didn’t recognize USB 3.0 adapater at boot…
Let’s go to find another adapter !!!

[Sebastian Roth]

@Matthieu-Jacquart Give it a go if you are keen! And please open a new topic on this so we don’t loose track of the main point in this discussion here (linux kernel on HP X2 210).

As a start you might want to read through this detailed discussion on USB NIC iPXE booting! Start with the very last post on page three that says “USB support is starting to arrive in mainline iPXE” on Feb 2015! I think you are really lucky to have a 100MBit USB NIC booting on your tablet in UEFI mode actually capturing and downloading images with FOG. This is more than a lot of other users have achieved so far. It always depends on the device’s BIOS/UEFI firmware to support this particular USB NIC. Then iPXE would need to run on this as well.

Anyhow, try some of those gigabit adapters that are available and start a new discussion on this. Hopefully you are lucky enought to find one that works as well!

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Sebastian-Roth ok, and thanks again so much for your help.
Do you think we can mark this topic as resolved, or we are waiting for a fix from HP / Insyde ?

[Sebastian Roth]

@Matthieu-Jacquart Good question. I’d better leave it as unsolved as this really is just a quick dirty hack and I am very afraid of pushing this into our main kernel. Talked to Tom Elliott about this already and I think we should better wait. Do your cloning as this is working for you now and I will get back to you for some more testing when we hear back from the firmware guys I’d say.

[Sebastian Roth]

@Matthieu-Jacquart The firmware people got back to me asking about the BIOS version. Can you please find out and tell me?

[schnecki]

Hi,
somehow this thread stopped. Was the discussion moved? I’m also interested in the topic. I have Linux running on the tablet. First I bootet with Ubuntu 16.04 beta release to be able to install ArchLinux from there. Ubuntu runs stable but does not show the battery status. ArchLinux runs instable, but does show the battery status. The problem is that the i2c designware platform module causes a kernel panic, and then freezes the system completely. I guess that’s also why it is not possible to boot any other Live system.

Here you can find the dmes output: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=113291

It looks loke there is a problem with a semaphore. Unfortunately, I’m not too familiar with the i2c module nor the kerenel itself. Could someone give me a hint what to try out?

Disabling the kernel module, as given under the link above fixes the issue, but causes other problems.

P.S.: Written from my x2 210 running ArchLinux

[Sebastian Roth]

@schnecki We are more than happy to help people solving their linux problems. But please understand that this forum is about FOG and we focus on getting FOG or FOS (the buildroot linux system at its base to do the imaging) to run on the devices. We only have basic knowledge on kernel stuff and we won’t be able to help you with this one I suppose.

The OP was about the linux kernel freezing when trying to enumerate PCI devices booted in UEFI mode. I guess you don’t see that issue as you probably use GRUB bootloader (which actually bypasses the UEFI STUB and boots the linux kernel as old school bzImage). What you ask is totally unrelated. Feel free to open a new discussion and see if anyone from the FOG community is able to help.

[schnecki]

@Sebastian-Roth oh I see, I thought that might be related. But you’re right, I’m booting via Grub. Thank’s for the info though

[Sebastian Roth]

Marking this thread solved for now as the OP is able to capture and deploy his tablets with the modified kernel. Although this is not a proper solution (more a hackish kind of workaround) we cannot do anything else than waiting for the people from HP we got in contact with to possibly fix the UEFI firmware!

As of now the HP devs confirmed our findings (screwed memory addresses) but we haven’t heard back from them for two weeks now. No solution yet…

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@sebastian-roth Hi Seb and @tom-elliott, I re-open this topic because I need to deploy once again our hybrid HP X2 210, but modified bzimage that Seb provided to me (bzImage_rb) is now too old for fog (base on kernel 4.3.3).
Without this I can’t deploy our 32 hybrid, is there any way to update the bzImage_rb ?
Thanks
Matthieu

[george1421]

@matthieu-jacquart Has there been any movement on HP’s part to update the uefi firmware on this hardware?

Is there a compatibility issue with the kernel your have vs the current release of FOG? Or is it just old and you want it updated? I’m just trying to understand the context.

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@george1421 It’s a long story, but it’s an incompatibility between this HP model and fog kernel (HP never made modification for this model and last bios don’t change the problem), so the only solution in February 2016 was to modified fog kernel (big thanks to Seb for his work), and after that everyhting worked fine.
But now I want to deploy these hybrid and with modified kernel (based on 4.3.3) I’ve got fog (1.5.0 RC8) message : kernel too old.