Several problems with Surface Pro 4

[Sebastian Roth]

@jhuesser said:

If i pull out the usb nix and putting it back in, it recognize, that somethig is pulled in, but pressing enter doesn’t work at any time.

The last line (r8152 .... eth0 ...) looks promising. Kind of strange that nothing is happending after hitting enter. Possibly the keyboard is internally connected via USB as well and just screwed up by re-plugging the USB NIC?!? Does the system freeze completely after that? What if you use an external USB keyboard?

[jhuesser]

@Sebastian-Roth Yeah, but after r8152 .. eth0 nothing happens. The keyboard also doesn’t get recognized if i don’t pull out anything. The keyboard is connected via the Surface connector. If i pull it out and plug it in again it says:

usb 1-7: new full-speed USB device number 3 using xhci_hcd

[Quazz]

The keyboard issue was also happening here , but as of yet no fix for it.

[george1421]

@Quazz said in Several problems with Surface Pro 4:

The keyboard issue was also happening here , but as of yet no fix for it.

It it clear that the keyboard is freezing or is the system locking up? If we add an external usb keyboard it is seen and is it usable?

[Tom Elliott]

I’ve just added a whole slew of keyboard drivers to the kernels. Can you try re-installing the 4.7.0 kernel and see if you can start using your keyboard again?

[jhuesser]

@Tom-Elliott Thank you very much! Downloaded the new kernels from the update kernel site, unfurtunally I’ve got the same error as above.

[Tom Elliott]

@jhuesser Is the keyboard still not working?

[jhuesser]

@Tom-Elliott nope, it isn’t working…

[Sebastian Roth]

@jhuesser So this is a keyboard error now, not a NIC error anymore?!? Do I get this right?

[jhuesser]

@Sebastian-Roth I’m not quite sure. It seems that FOS doesn’t regocnize the NIC and the keyboard. I don’t know how FOS exactly works, but after r8182 2-1:1.0 eth0 v1.08.5 should there be more? Because after replug the nic it stops there.

[jhuesser]

I’ve looked into it with @Sebastian-Roth We’ve modifyed the initrd to remove the keyboard interaction (pressing enter to continue). After that the Surface continues with the boot and starts the debut upload task, but because the keyboard doesn’t get recognized, I can’t start the fog script…

[Tom Elliott]

@jhuesser Remove the debug flag from the db. It will not be in debug mode and should continue on as expected, unless you started this as “Host->Basic Tasks->Advanced Tasks->Capture - Debug/Deploy - Debug” in which case you’d need to cancel the task and recreate the tasking like you normally would.

Of course you could just do the cancel recreate tasking method anyway (which is likely going to be faster than finding the task in mysql and removing the debug flag.

[jhuesser]

@Tom-Elliott I’ve used an USB-Keyboard with an USB-Hub and it works!

if i register the other surface with the full host registration i still need the keyboard to enter the details, but as i said with the USB Keyboard it’s fine just as @Sebastian-Roth said in chat. Currently I’m uploading the image, hope that works, so marking this as solved

Thank you all for your help!

[george1421]

@jhuesser OK now that you have it working with an external keyboard can we collect some additional details on this surface pro 4? Is there a sub version that we need to be aware of (remember I’m ignorant of the surface pro tablets). So is there like a surface pro 4 model XXXXX or something like that. I would expect the linux kernel developers will add support for this internal keyboard at some time in the future. Eventually it may make it into the FOS engine.

I’m kind of surprised that others that have imaged the surface pro 4 with FOG didn’t report keyboard issues before now. That is what is making me think there are different models to the surface pro.4. It would be interesting to see if a commercial linux distribution would have the same issue. Something current like ubuntu desktop live would answer that.

Either way I’m glad you have it worked out and can move forward.

[jhuesser]

@george1421 It’s the surface pro 4 with the smallest computer power.https://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/devices/surface-pro-4#techspec-block the one with the Intel Core m3

I’ve one booted the ubuntu live USB stick. It didn’t recognized the keyboard (and the touchscreen, but that’s not important for FOG i guess).

[george1421]

@jhuesser Thank you on the feedback.

Since a commercial distro is having trouble with the keyboard then in a way thats a good thing. The linux guys may be working on it. The point here is that the FOS engine uses the 4.7 linux kernel (which is pretty current) and the commercial distros are typically many versions behind because they are aiming for stability not bleeding edge hardware support.

[Tom Elliott]

@george1421 I’m currently building the 4.7.1 kernels and hopefully I’ve added a ton more drivers. I Doubt it will work for the Surface KB but I’m hoping at least to get more support all around.

[george1421]

@Tom-Elliott I’m speculating that either the surface pro has some yet unknown pci bridge or usb bridge or keyboard controller. That is getting in the way. Do you know of a way (other than lspci) to identify/list unknown hardware?

[Tom Elliott]

@george1421 lshw lsusb lspci dmesg

Personally, dmesg will probably be of more use as even if the kernel doesn’t have drivers we should see the device in the list on load up.

[jhuesser]

Btw, could succesfully up- and download an image for SP4!