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

[Sebastian Roth]

@Matthieu-Jacquart Seams like we are pushing this quite far. Michael from iPXE now contacted people at HP (responsible for that particular UEFI firmware build) to see what they might know about this. Might be a firmware bug. We will see.

From the things I posted the ipxe.efi binary with more dump code added is the most important! This might be helpful information. Please get into this first on Monday.

And there is one more thing that just came to my mind. Have you tried all these things on one of your tablets only? Could you please do the USB stick test on at least two or three other devices to make sure we see the same issue and address/size values on all of them!!!

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Sebastian-Roth From beginning I always made each test on 2 tablets, I hope it’s good enough

ok first one with ipxe file (DEBUG=efi_wrap…)

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Sebastian-Roth Second test, with bzimage_sp. Tested with ipxe and usb key (both tests on both tab)

iPXE

USB

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Sebastian-Roth And third test with bzImage_rb (once again on both tablets with iPXE and USB)

iPXE

USB

[Sebastian Roth]

@Matthieu-Jacquart Nice, thanks for all the pictures and testing. Got a first answer from HP but seams like they are on holiday till the 15th and won’t be able to look into this earlier.

So my quick fixes only worked partly. Seams like it fixed the hang when booting via USB. The kernel panic is fine because we cannot easily add kernel parameters and initrd when booting the kernel straight as bootx64.efi. Unfortunately the same kernel seams to hang when trying to ExitBootServices. One obvious difference is the efi_wrap debug outputs in iPXE. So you might want to go back to the original ipxe.efi and give that a try with bzImage_rb… keeping my fingers crossed.

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Sebastian-Roth POPOPO !!! Much better !

Upload task with USB 2.0/100Mb adapter…

Many thanks Seb, that’s great !

[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