Several problems with Surface Pro 4

[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!

[Sebastian Roth]

@jhuesser Great to hear! Would be awesome if you could provide the information Tom asked as well.

[Wayne Workman]

@jhuesser Can you summarize exactly what is needed for the Surface Pro 4 please? This thread is really, really long - and we need a summary that is reproducible and clear.

[Quazz]

From what I gather:

Not working: keyboard in FOS engine, NIC in debug mode?

Working: iPXE menu, capture/deploy

Needed: has_usb_nic=1 kernel parameter. intel7156.efi or realtek7156.efi (or other 7156 ipxe bootfile depending on your USB NIC)

Please add/modify as needed.

[jhuesser]

Here are the steps wich resolved the issues:

@jhuesser said in Several problems with Surface Pro 4:

• If i select an entry the display just goes dark, nothing happens

Use intel7156.efi

• If i select Boot from harddisk REFIND_EFI starts, i need to press a key and then windows tries to boot but get stuck at the windows logo. (no problem if i boot without pxe)

Use intel7156.efi

• If a task is assigned it get stuck at

bzImage... ok
init.xz... ok

Use intel7156.efi

• Perform Full Host Registration and Inventory & Quick registration doesn’t work (Select menu entry -> screen goes dark; Quick registration -> chainload failed).

manually add the host and add has_usb_nic=1 to the host settings. (also for dhcp error in FOS)

@jhuesser said in Several problems with Surface Pro 4:

@george1421 It doesn’t recognize the keyboard at this point. (…)

Use an USB-Keyboard with an USB-Hub

@Sebastian-Roth Am I right, if i used the USB keyboard at the beginning, there is no need to modify the initrd to remove the keyboard interaction?

@Tom-Elliott said in Several problems with Surface Pro 4:

@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.

Should i execute dmesg on a ubuntu bootet on the SP4 or in the FOS Engine?

[Quazz]

@jhuesser So the NIC can get DHCP in debug_mode now?

Am I right, if i used the USB keyboard at the beginning, there is no need to modify the initrd to remove the keyboard interaction?

Yes

Should i execute dmesg on a ubuntu bootet on the SP4 or in the FOS Engine?

I think either works, but likely more convenient to boot ubuntu to transfer the output. Make sure the keyboard dock is connected on boot so the information is collected.

[jhuesser]

@Quazz Will do it tomorrow, right now the Surface is getting imaged, and it takes a bit long (old USB HUB)

[Sebastian Roth]

@jhuesser said:

Should i execute dmesg on a ubuntu bootet on the SP4 or in the FOS Engine?

Both will give us some good information although I think that running those on the FOG system would give us a better idea what works and what not.

[jdd49]

@Tom-Elliott
Not sure if you got the keyboard issue figured out or what drivers / patches you added, but I have successfully used this in the past for SP4
https://github.com/cransom/surface-pro-3-nixos/blob/master/multitouch.patch

[Tom Elliott]

@jdd49 I’ve saved this on my bookmarks list and updated the kernels to have the reflected patch changes within the current 4.7.1 kernels.

Thanks for posting.

[Wayne Workman]

#wiki worthy

[jhuesser]

This is the output of the dmesgcommand, once in Ubuntu on the SP4 and once in FOS.

(I wanted to upload it here, Got an error “You have not enough privileges”)

dmesg output on google drive

[jhuesser]

Just a small update:

In my solution post i wrote, that I’ve used intel7156.efi as bootfile. Just tried to image again and iPXE couldn’t get a DHCP address. So now I used ipxe7156.efi and it seems to work fine.

[Sebastian Roth]

@jhuesser Just note that the xxx7156.* binaries will be gone in the next release as iPXE project has fixed the issue and we decided to remove those binaries. So you need to change your DHCP server to serve ipxe.efi when the next FOG version is released and you want to upgrade.

[Quazz]

@sebastian-roth Probably a good idea to include that in the announcement when it comes.