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

[Wayne Workman]

I suppose the simple things have been checked, for instance removing any extra storage devices like SD cards and MicroSD cards ?

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Wayne-Workman Yes, there’s just internal SSD and RJ45 adapteur
@Tom-Elliott I’ve been waiting much more than 5 minutes, around 1 hour, and still nothing…

Something interesting, I have some error message when I choose boot from hard disk or memtest86 :

Just testing with last svn / kernel 4.4, same trouble

[george1421]

@Matthieu-Jacquart If you are willing and have a general knowledge of linux, I would like you to try something.

I’ve been working on an idea about booting the FOG Client kernel (the bits of FOG code that run on the target computer to load or capture images) using a usb drive. Understand this is only for debugging purposes. Right now it is not clear in my mind if the booting issues with these newer efi based systems are with the PXE boot kernel, the FOG Client kernel, or the hand off between ipxe and the FOG kernel.

To test this I wrote a document to create a uefi boot media that will boot the fog kernel from USB. You can not capture or deploy using this kernel only access command line tools. But the point of this exercise is to see if it boots, period.

If you have a spare 2GB or larger usb flash drive, are comfortable with some linux commands and have a little time; could you follow the instructions outlined here: https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/6532/usb-boot-target-device-into-fog-debug-os/3

For the sake of the test, I only want you to execute what appears id method #3. Understand these instructions were written for ubuntu, but they should translate to debian without issue ( ) . At the bottom there is a copy and paste section where you can copy the commands paste them into a text editor, change the reference to the usb flash drive and then just execute the commands one after another through a remote terminal. It takes me less and 5 minutes to execute the commands once you have the apt-get files installed.

For the flash drive start with a freshly formatted flash drive using a windows computer and format it fat32 (note the first step of my instructions tells linux to reformat the drive, any existing content will be lost). If you have any questions about this, please post back here.

What I want to test:

1. Does it boot?
2. IF it doesn’t boot is there an error message?
3. Does this image boot on any other device you have that is in uefi mode?

After this test we will add in the grub insmod commands and test again. But first lets see if you can build the boot drive and get it to boot on this table as is.

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@george1421 ok, Here’s the result… I don’t know what to do with that

[Tom Elliott]

@Matthieu-Jacquart I need more information. You’re having issues getting fog to boot ON the hybrid, or you’re having issues with iPXE passing the information back to the tablet to allow booting to the actual Hard Drive?

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Tom-Elliott Oh, my English is too bad to well understand…
I can access to the fog menu with the hybrid, but only with efi file. And after fogmenu, I can’t launch any options : I’ve got error with options “boot on hard drive” and “memtest”

and for other options (quick image, or quick / full registration), screen stay black.

[Tom Elliott]

@Matthieu-Jacquart Want to hit me up on chat and maybe we can teamviewer?

[george1421]

@Matthieu-Jacquart It looks like the grub.cfg is not formatted properly. For now I will sit down and wait to see what Tom is able to do for you.

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@george1421 Do you think I made a mistake ?
I can try to do usb key once again ?

[george1421]

@Matthieu-Jacquart From the error it sounds like something is confused in the grub.cfg file only. I would check to see if there isn’t something missing in that file.

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@george1421 ok, I plug usb key on another computer and I had same result

[george1421]

@Matthieu-Jacquart

Sorry I was not clear, busy morning here.

What you need to do is to look at the configuration of the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file on the flash drive. You can edit this on a windows computer or via linux. I’m suspecting that this file is either missing (you skipped a step) or the structure is not what grub expects. If you still can’t get it to work, I have a captured image on my home computer that I can post tonight. That way all you have to do is to write it to a flash drive and there are no other steps that are needed.

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@george1421 Indeed, there is no grub.cfg in boot/grub…
27/01/2016 09:33 <DIR> i386-efi
27/01/2016 09:35 <DIR> locale
27/01/2016 09:33 <DIR> fonts
27/01/2016 09:33 <DIR> x86_64-efi
27/01/2016 09:33 1 024 grubenv
27/01/2016 09:35 <DIR> i386-pc

But there’s a grub.efi in EFI/boot folder

I’m going to home, work day finish for me, I’ll continue tests tomorrow !

[george1421]

@Matthieu-Jacquart OK, I will have something for you in the morning, cheers.

[sarge_212]

Just FYI, I had to manually make the grub.cfg file. Running grub-install on an ubuntu box didn’t make the grub.cfg file as expected.

[george1421]

@sarge_212 said:

Just FYI, I had to manually make the grub.cfg file. Running grub-install on an ubuntu box didn’t make the grub.cfg file as expected.

Yes this is expected. The bash script posted here will create the complete image file without having to mess around with running this and editing that.
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/6532/usb-boot-target-device-into-fog-debug-os/19
But it does require having all of the grub2 files downloaded either through yum or apt-get as you would need if you manually executed the files. Understand this process is still under development but it works for me, as they say.

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@george1421 Hi George
Not sure to understand, you will sent me the grub.cfg file, or you want me to test your new script ?
Thanks
Matthieu

[Sebastian Roth]

I think George meant you better create grub.cfg config yourself and put it in /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Here is his example config:

set timeout=10
set default=0
insmod all_video

menuentry "FOG 32-bit Debug Kernel" {
 linux  /boot/bzImage32 loglevel=7 init=/sbin/init root=/dev/ram0 rw ramdisk_size=127000 pcie_aspm=off consoleblank=0 isdebug=yes
 initrd /boot/init_32.xz
}

menuentry "FOG 64-bit Debug Kernel" {
 linux  /boot/bzImage loglevel=7 init=/sbin/init root=/dev/ram0 rw ramdisk_size=127000 pcie_aspm=off consoleblank=0 isdebug=yes
 initrd /boot/init.xz
}

[Matthieu Jacquart]

@Sebastian-Roth
Ok thanks, that’s good.
Here it is :

[george1421]

@Matthieu-Jacquart Success!! this is good news at least the FOG debug OS will run on this tablet.

Please boot this tablet again using this flash drive. Make sure the usb etherent adapter is plugged in and connected to your network. When you get this screen in your picture, press enter a few time. This should give you a command prompt. Then key in ip addr show Hopefully it should show you a correct IP address for the usb ethernet adapter. If it does then the FOG debug OS sees that ethernet adapter and it can communicate with the network. If you can get to this point where the fog kernel is running and can talk on the network you have passed part two requirement. Since you are getting the fog menu you have already passed part one of the requirement to pxe boot.

If this is successful we need to identify why the hand off between ipxe (not created by the fog project) and the fog kernel is giving you a blank screen. You might want to do a refresh (update) of the fog environment since this post is a few days old. There has been many updates to fog and I believe the fog kernel too. It may now work with the updates.