Surface 3 Fails to Image

[Imperilled]

Imaging and deploy works but he make a raw image. I will try to set compression as default to see if it’s better …

[wwarsin]

@Imperilled Would you mind creating some steps to manually install the 4.2.3 kernel so i can try it out? I have a feeling I’ll run into the same problem before i updated where it either didn’t detect the hard drive or tried to image but just set Complete and never actually captured the image…

[Imperilled]

@wwarsin I just change bzImage file in the directory after downloading it in fog sourceforge…

[wwarsin]

@Imperilled I tried that and the iPXE loader gets stuck (freezes) right after loading “Init.xz” (which is right after bzimage)

[Tom Elliott]

@Sebastian-Roth sorry I didn’t get to this sooner when I get home tonight I’ll try to get this done. I’m tired today though so I’m sorry if I forget again lol.

[Tom Elliott]

@wwarsin you could use the kernel update page to select the kernel you need.

[wwarsin]

@Tom-Elliott Hi Tom, I just tried that and recieved the following error (I’m on SVN 5666 now)

FOGFTP: Failed to rename file. Remote Path: //var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/bzImage/backup/bzImage_20151207_214012, Local Path: /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/bzImage, Error: ftp_rename(): Rename failed.

I manually renamed the files manually, tried again and it downloaded them.

I still get the same error message on the FOG screen, I’m not sure if this bit helps i must have missed it before:

Error ident-mapping new memmap (0x13ac72000)!
i0042: No controller found
Starting logging: OK
Populating /dev using udev: udevdp2316]: error creating epoll fd: Fonction not implemented
done
Initializing random number generator... done.
Starting eth0 interface
cdc_ether 1-2.1:2.0 eth0: kevent 12 may have been dropped
udhcpc (v1.23.2) started
Sending discover...
Read error: Network is down, reopening socket
udhcpc: bind: no such device
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
ssh-keygen: generating new host keys: RSA DSA

Then the FOG logo screen loads and fails with No Network interfaces found.

I tried Kernel 4.2.2 and 3.18.5 as well and received the same thing…

[Sebastian Roth]

@wwarsin So you cannot make it work again even if you use older kernels? When initially posting you didn’t have those network issues, right?

Do you always see the same error messages (“cdc_ether 1-2.1:2.0 eth0: kevent 12 may have been dropped” and “cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument”)?? Kernel 4.2.2 and 3.18.5 as well??

I really hope we can make this work for you. Others have been successfully imaging their surfaces and you are pretty close as well I reckon.

[wwarsin]

@Sebastian-Roth Yeah, I was getting past the network portion before i upgraded to SVN… Am I able to download the current package from sourceforge and downgrade FOG?

Yes I see the same CDC and cat errors in 4.2.2 & 3.18.5

I appreciate the help you and Tom have been so far!

[Sebastian Roth]

@wwarsin Downgrading is not supported. It might work (if there were no major changes in the DB) but it might also cause serious problems. And it wouldn’t help much anyway because the installer always downloads the current kernel. So you would end up with an older version of the webinterface with a current kernel. No better than what you have right now.

Have you tried 4.2.3 yet?

Yeah, I was getting past the network portion before i upgraded to SVN…

Now I am confused! Do you really mean the network was fine BEFORE upgrading to SVN (so using 1.2.0)?? I kind of doubt. You mean before upgrading to 5590!??

I really don’t understand why this NIC would use the cdc_ether driver if it’s really a realtek NIC…

[wwarsin]

@Sebastian-Roth Yes, sorry i didn’t make that clear, I tried 4.2.3 yesterday. I too am confused as i didn’t have the network problem when i was on SVN 5473 only when I upgraded to 5590.

I tried 4.2.3 again today (still on SVN 5666) (manually deleted bzimage and bzimage32) and used the Kernel update page to download 4.2.3 and i get the same error i posted yesterday.

I booted back into debug mode and verified that the ID of the network adapter is still 045e:07ab.
If i have time today I’ll see if i can do a fresh FOG install using the current stable release and then download kernel 4.2.3 and see if i get the same thing.

@Imperilled Are you using the Microsoft 10/100 network adapter (1552) or the Microsoft gigabit adapter (1663)?

[Wayne Workman]

@wwarsin said:

@Tom-Elliott Hi Tom, I just tried that and recieved the following error (I’m on SVN 5666 now)

FOGFTP: Failed to rename file. Remote Path: //var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/bzImage/backup/bzImage_20151207_214012, Local Path: /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/bzImage, Error: ftp_rename(): Rename failed.

You’ll find the FTP credentials and host used for the Kernel updater here:

FOG Configuration -> FOG Settings -> TFTP Server ->

• FOG_TFTP_HOST #This is the IP that FTP uses for putting the kernel in place.
• FOG_TFTP_FTP_USERNAME #This is the username FTP uses.
• FOG_TFTP_FTP_PASSWORD #This is the password FTP uses.
• FOG_TFTP_PXE_KERNEL_DIR #This is where FTP tries to put the kernels.

Also, @Tom-Elliott I’ve recently discovered a bug. I don’t know how long it’s existed but I was able to figure it out today. On both our Administration FOG setup, and my building’s FOG setup (which is separate), the FOG_TFTP_PXE_KERNEL_DIR is missing a slash in the path:
/var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe/ The one colored red. I manually corrected it on both and it works, but we didn’t manually remove that slash. Just pointing that out to maybe help others with the issue.

[Sebastian Roth]

@wwarsin @Imperilled I just found out that all the RTL8152/8153 based connectors are blacklisted in the cdc_ether driver (see here: http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/drivers/net/usb/cdc_ether.c#L686). Your microsoft NIC isn’t just because they don’t know/care about those yet I guess.

What does this mean? To my understanding the cdc_ether driver is not happy with those realtek USB NICs and tries to stay out of the way. But because your NICs IDs are not blacklisted the driver still jumps in - and might possibly work.

But there is a “real” RTL8152/8153 driver in linux as well (http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/drivers/net/usb/r8152.c) but this one is not finding your USB NICs as it is not aware of those microsoft IDs either…

I am compiling a patched kernel (4.3.0) right now. Would you please give this a try. Just move your current bzImage out of the way (backup) and put this test kernel into place.

Update: Just after having finished compiling the kernel I stumbled upon a patch which someone else came up with. Guess what. It’s pretty much exactly what I just did: http://svn.exactcode.de/t2/trunk/package/base/linux/surface-dock-eth.patch

So here is the bzImage: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-bOeHjoUmyMV095YVpsR3U5VFk&usp=sharing

[Tom Elliott]

Kernels have been updated with the non-CDC-ETHER but with the patch in this thread. Please update and let me know if things are (or are not) functional now?

[wwarsin]

@Tom-Elliott @Sebastian-Roth

I installed the lastest SVN (5686) and attempted to boot with the bzimage it installed as well as replaced the bzimage file with the link you provided and I still receive the no network error…

ifconfig in debug mode also still only shows lo

Error ident-mapping new memmap (0x13ac72000)!
Starting logging:* OK
Populating /dev using udev: udevd[2950]: error creating epoll fd: Function not implemented
done
Initializing random number generator... done.
Starting eth0 interface
ip: SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such device
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: No such file or directory
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument
ssh-keygen: generating ew boot keys: RSA DSA ECDSA ED25519
Starting sshd: OK

I may not be able to do any testing until mid/late next week (or even the week after next) after today.

[Sebastian Roth]

@wwarsin Can you please try ifconfig -a and as well ls -al /sys/class/net/eth0/device/driver/module (to see which driver is actually used)…

And as well could you please check dmesg dmesg | grep eth

[Imperilled]

I will try your kernel tomorrow. I need to find a solution because my image are still in raw… 124Gb X 15 surface it’s a day to deploy with only one adapter

[Sebastian Roth]

@Imperilled Kernel won’t make a difference in your particular case! I would really like to see your issue fixed as well. Could you please open a new topic on this. Makes it a lot easier for everyone to follow if we don’t discuss two different topics in one thread! Please let us know what error you see when trying to upload an Multiple Partition - Single Disk image and we should be able to help you on this.

[wwarsin]

@Sebastian-Roth

I upgraded to SVN 5762 and the surface booted directly into debug mode (instead of having to manually enter the IP address of the fog server) but network still isn’t working. I ran lsusb again because i’ve acquired the Microsoft Model 1663 (USB to ethernet Gigabit adapter).
045e:07c6

If you prefer i test with the model 1552 (10/100 adapter) let me know but we’ll probably use the 1663 once we get this working.

[Sebastian Roth]

@wwarsin Yes, we changed the iPXE script which is probably why you don’t see it asking for the IP address anymore. Upgrading to the latest version means that the latest kernel has been downloaded as well. I am not sure if the patch is still part of the kernel. @Tom-Elliott??

Re-reading all the posts I saw that you had a full dmesg output posted with your very first question already (thank god you did!):

cdc_ether 1-2.4:2.0 eth0: register 'cdc_ether' at usb-0000:00:14.0-2.4, CDC Ethernet Device, 60:45:bd:f9:62:b6
...
cdc_ether 1-2.4:2.0 eth0: kevent 12 may have been dropped

So to me this means that an older kernel version was magicaly able to run your USB NIC device with the cdc_ether driver. I am not sure why this is not working anymore even if we add this driver back to the kernel. But I am not confident with the cdc_ether driver anyway and would hope that we don’t need it at all (RTL8152 chips being blacklisted is just on thing I don’t like about it).

So we are back to the question: Are we able to make this USB NIC work with the r8152 driver and possibly how??

In your last post I see

cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: No such file or directory
cat: /sys/class/net/eth0/carrier: Invalid argument

Looks like eth0 is not available on the first try but pops up at some point. My guess is that Tom removed the patch after you last try as it didn’t seam to work. So the current version you installed when upgrading to the latest version might have installed a kernel without patch. But from what I see in your posts I have a feeling that we are pretty close to get this work with the patch.

Feel free to try this kernel again: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-bOeHjoUmyMV095YVpsR3U5VFk&usp=sharing
Boot into debug mode and wait for a few seconds. Then see what you get from ls -al /sys/class/net/eth0/device/driver/module and dmesg | grep 8152