Boot File Testing for SR

[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

[Psycholiquid]

02_efi_timer_ipxe_wo_debug: No hang on init.xz

[george1421]

@psycholiquid Pssst… to adjust the small font size try this FOS kernel parameter vga=792

vga=792 should be 1024x768x24 video mode, and clean your monitor, please!!!

ref: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/71231/grub2-and-kernel-vga-parameter/114980

[Psycholiquid]

@george1421 Stupid thing requires I constantly touch it. I hate these surfaces. in order to boot from anything other than Windows Boot I have to swipe the screen I need those white gloves jewelers use.

[Sebastian Roth]

@Psycholiquid This is confusing me more and more. If I didn’t do anything wrong then those two binaries were compiled from most current iPXE source with our FOG header files and would show that the initial issue was fixed in the iPXE code since then and we didn’t notice…

Would you please do me another favor and test those new binaries as well: 302f1eeipxe.efi, 694c18ipxe.efi, c917687ipxe.efi, e09331aipxe.efi, 5cf5ffeipxe.efi, 757ab9ipxe.efi, d37e025ipxe.efi and HEADipxe.efi (download. Just post short notes on each binary “No hang on init.xz” or “Hang on init.xz”. Thanks!

[Psycholiquid]

ok, doing it now. Sorry roaming profiles migration making me manic…

[Psycholiquid]

@sebastian-roth

302f1eeipxe.efi: wont boot at all on my surface
694c18ipxe.efi: Hang on init.xz
c917687ipxe.efi: Hang on init.xz
e09331aipxe.efi: Hang on init.xz
5cf5ffeipxe.efi: No hang on init.xz
757ab9ipxe.efi: Hang on init.xz
d37e025ipxe.efi: No hang on init.xz
HEADipxe.efi: Hang on init.xz

[Sebastian Roth]

@Psycholiquid Something must have gone wrong here. Maybe I uploaded the wrong HEADipxe.efi or your test failed somehow. Could you please re-test that one binary?

[Psycholiquid]

@sebastian-roth said in Boot File Testing for SR:

@Psycholiquid Something must have gone wrong here. Maybe I uploaded the wrong HEADipxe.efi or your test failed somehow. Could you please re-test that one binary?

HEADipxe.efi: Hang on init.xz

Same result

[Sebastian Roth]

The other possible explanation I can comes up with is that this is all a timing issue and we see it working and sometimes hanging with the same binary… Could you try a dozen times? As well please try one of the non-hanging binaries several times.

[Psycholiquid]

@sebastian-roth said in Boot File Testing for SR:

The other possible explanation I can comes up with is that this is all a timing issue and we see it working and sometimes hanging with the same binary… Could you try a dozen times? As well please try one of the non-hanging binaries several times.

Yep not a problem

[Psycholiquid]

HEADipxe.efi: Hang on init.xz (attempted 15 times)

5cf5ffeipxe.efi: No hang on init.xz (attempted 15 times)

[Sebastian Roth]

@Psycholiquid Thanks heaps! I can’t stop scratching my head. Let me try to sort this. For you to understand, I just picked a couple of git commits from the iPXE repo where changes were made to the efi timer code:

757ab9 - Wed, 4 May 2016 - Hang on init.xz
c917687 - Mon, 20 Jun 2016 - Hang on init.xz
694c18 - Mon, 20 Jun 2016 - Hang on init.xz
e09331a - Wed, 7 Dec 2016 - Hang on init.xz
5cf5ffe - Wed, 7 Dec 2016 - No hang on init.xz
d37e025 - Wed, 25 Jan 2017 - No hang on init.xz
302f1ee - Thu, 26 Jan 2017 - wont boot at all on my surface
d46c53c (HEAD revision couple of days ago) - Wed, 13 Sep 2017 - Hang on init.xz

So to me it looks as if we have a regression here. Worked nicely with some changes made Dezember 16/January 17 but we are back to hang again on the latest versions.

More to the point - commit 5cf5ffe seems to have fixed the issue. Reading this commit message I can kind of imagine why this stuff is causing problems…

EFI provides no clean way for device drivers to shut down in
preparation for handover to a booted operating system. The platform
firmware simply doesn’t bother to call the drivers’ Stop() methods.
Instead, drivers must register an EVT_SIGNAL_EXIT_BOOT_SERVICES event
to be signalled when ExitBootServices() is called, and clean up
without any reference to the EFI driver model.

So what to do next?

[Psycholiquid]

@sebastian-roth No problem, I am really not liking these Surfaces and it looks like M$ is pretty much giving up them also. Go figure, they release something they no longer want ot make anymore.

[Sebastian Roth]

@Psycholiquid Let’s see what the iPXE devs make of this: http://lists.ipxe.org/pipermail/ipxe-devel/2017-September/005837.html

[Sebastian Roth]

@Psycholiquid We got an answer from Michael Brown (chief iPXE dev) and seems like we are on a good track with this. Now we need to figure out which commit broke things again. Here are some new binaries to test for you - download link.

1b67a056.efi
3ae70be.efi
9ccd8fe.efi
993fd2b.efi
6bd0060.efi
6324227.efi
a8f80a7.efi

Same as before, just test and post if it hangs on init.xz or boots properly or does something different altogether. Hope you still have that setup up and running. Remember that has_usb_nic=1 parameter…

[Psycholiquid]

@sebastian-roth Always have the setup LOL. I will get them tested between user migrations today. Pray for me. Users are retarded.

[Psycholiquid]

@sebastian-roth

1b67a056.efi: No hang on Init.xz
3ae70be.efi: No hang on Init.xz
9ccd8fe.efi: No hang on Init.xz
993fd2b.efi: No hang on Init.xz
6bd0060.efi: No hang on Init.xz
6324227.efi: No hang on Init.xz
a8f80a7.efi: No hang on Init.xz

[Sebastian Roth]

@Psycholiquid Thanks again for testing and sorry for my late reply. Somehow this doesn’t really add up but it seems like tiny changes in the (EFI) timer code break iPXE for the surfaces.

There are another couple of binaries to test (same download link). Though I am a bit in a hurry and those were compiled on a different machine that I usually do this. So hope I still got it all right. Please test and report back again in the same manner.

@Tom-Elliott Seems like after a long fight we can finally get rid of those 7156 binaries. Turns out the issue was fixed in iPXE without us even properly reporting it. If you’re fine with removing those binaries just let me know or go for it yourself. Sure some people are used to having those and need to change their DHCP config again but I think it’s worth getting rid of this old crap altogether now!