| seatsea_m | Hello! I've encountered my most surprising bug yet. | 07:47 |
|---|---|---|
| seatsea_m | I've just setup xubuntu on a zotac PI223, and as I open the software center, the device powers off completely, no warning, no kernel panic nothing | 07:48 |
| seatsea_m | It seems to be when it begins scanning for firmware updates. | 07:48 |
| pmjdebru1jn | that's not a good sign | 07:49 |
| pmjdebru1jn | seatsea_m: that would imply your EFI/BIOS is buggy? | 07:49 |
| pmjdebru1jn | seatsea_m: have you tried manually updating your EFI/BIOS ? | 07:50 |
| seatsea_m | Well to begin with, I had to use a 32bit EFI loader to even be able to boot the installer. So logical assumption is, the software center is expecting 64bit EFI | 07:51 |
| seatsea_m | When in reality, this device's EFI is 32bit | 07:51 |
| pmjdebru1jn | possibly, though linux has most of the thing needed for different EFI bitness | 07:51 |
| pmjdebru1jn | although they may have focussed on 32->64 not as much 64->32 | 07:51 |
| seatsea_m | Which is understandable, but I guess for the time being as this device is just destined to be a Skype machine, I would rather just disable the software center from scanning for firmware | 07:52 |
| seatsea_m | However I wanted to report this issue anyway, as it's a pretty serious one. | 07:53 |
| pmjdebru1jn | seatsea_m: btw, did you try updating the EFI manually to the latest and see if the issue is still reproducable? | 07:54 |
| seatsea_m | I'll have to look into if that's possible for this device | 07:54 |
| pmjdebru1jn | also, as a sidenote, does the device still have Legacy/CSM mode (given it's 32bit EFI, probablynot)? if so, that may be a better work around... | 07:55 |
| pmjdebru1jn | seatsea_m: essentially the big question here is, is the kernel doing something wrong, or is it just triggering a bug in EFI | 07:55 |
| pmjdebru1jn | EFIs in general are fairly buggy | 07:55 |
| seatsea_m | It doesn't seem to have legacy, I looked around the BIOS options. | 07:56 |
| pmjdebru1jn | I'm surprised you got xubuntu installed at all to be honest | 07:56 |
| seatsea_m | Unless it's a weird hybrid bios like my old Asus board that did both legacy and EFI simultaneously (without a toggle). It seems to only support EFI | 07:57 |
| seatsea_m | Have to agree with you there, didn't expect it to work either | 07:57 |
| pmjdebru1jn | actually most BIOS/EFI do both simultaneously | 07:57 |
| pmjdebru1jn | it's not weird at all | 07:57 |
| seatsea_m | But the installation worked without a hitch other than having to put the 32 EFI loader | 07:58 |
| seatsea_m | Oh, I assumed the default was to have a toggle to chose either/or | 07:58 |
| seatsea_m | There does indeed seem to be a bios update tool, | 08:00 |
| seatsea_m | I will run it | 08:01 |
| pmjdebru1jn | so all new system simply have EFI... no BIOS | 08:02 |
| pmjdebru1jn | but they have a bit of code called a CSM, which emulates BIOS APIs | 08:02 |
| pmjdebru1jn | which is why most EFIs can do both simultaneously | 08:03 |
| seatsea_m | Noted | 08:03 |
| seatsea_m | Man I hate BIOS updates, always so worried there will be a power outage or something and brick the device | 08:06 |
| pmjdebru1jn | in theory most EFI devices should be more robust in that sense | 08:07 |
| pmjdebru1jn | but yeah, it's not fun regardless | 08:07 |
| pmjdebru1jn | laptop are less unnerving... since built in UPS :) | 08:07 |
| seatsea_m | Xubuntu reports this device has a battery, but it definitely doesn't | 08:08 |
| seatsea_m | Alright, BIOS updated, still crashes the device when I open the software app | 08:08 |
| pmjdebru1jn | presumably this is a mini-pc? so it probably has laptop grade hardware inside, maybe that includes the battery controller, even if no battery is connected | 08:08 |
| seatsea_m | Maybe so | 08:08 |
| seatsea_m | It's a P series | 08:08 |
| pmjdebru1jn | so the last thing you could try, is setup a netconsole, and then try to crash it | 08:09 |
| pmjdebru1jn | maybe some relevant kernel message will be captured | 08:09 |
| seatsea_m | I've never done that before, how do I proceed? | 08:09 |
| pmjdebru1jn | also, you might want to report this to the fwupd folks, since they might be able to guide you much better in this | 08:09 |
| pmjdebru1jn | https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Netconsole | 08:10 |
| seatsea_m | I should have know it's on the archwiki | 08:10 |
| pmjdebru1jn | haha :) | 08:10 |
| pmjdebru1jn | they do a good job of providing documentation yes :D | 08:10 |
| pmjdebru1jn | that often mostly distro independant | 08:10 |
| pmjdebru1jn | btw, to test netconsole, to see if its working, you can plugin a usb drive or something, that usually generates some kernel messages | 08:11 |
| pmjdebru1jn | seatsea_m: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/fwupd | 08:14 |
| seatsea_m | pmjdebru1jn: unfortunately, I can't run netconsole, neither of the interfaces on the device support polling, | 08:44 |
| pmjdebru1jn | ah bummer | 08:45 |
| pmjdebru1jn | I highly suggest to put this case on the fwupd list | 08:45 |
| pmjdebru1jn | since this is likely not a xubuntu specific issue | 08:45 |
| pmjdebru1jn | at worst the Zotac could be blacklisted in fwupd | 08:46 |
| seatsea_m | Alright, unfortunately this is a device I'm setting up in a business situation, so I won't have much opportunity to debug | 08:47 |
| pmjdebru1jn | i'd at least mention it on the list | 08:47 |
| pmjdebru1jn | the flipside is though, depending on what it's used for, maybe a completely different device might be the proper solution | 08:47 |
| pmjdebru1jn | 32uefi is something that isn't well supported on linux at all | 08:48 |
| pmjdebru1jn | future major upgrades have a not negligible likelyhood of breaking | 08:48 |
| pmjdebru1jn | anyhow that's your call, just food for thought | 08:48 |
| seatsea_m | Well I'll leave the decision up to my boss, meanwhile is there a way I can disable the firmware update checking? | 08:50 |
| pmjdebru1jn | no clue to be honest | 08:51 |
| pmjdebru1jn | anyhow when looking for hardware to run linux on, having either legacy support (preferable), or 64bit EFI is not a luxury | 08:52 |
| seatsea_m | pmjdebru1jn: tried disabling the update feature of gnome-software via dconf but no change | 09:05 |
| Miki_J | hello, i managed to install xubuntu on an aspire es1-533 with "sudo ubiquity -b" | 13:58 |
| Miki_J | i am having problems getting it to boot | 14:00 |
| Miki_J | i followed the instructions here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/862946/unable-to-install-ubuntu-on-acer-aspire-es1-533 | 14:01 |
| Miki_J | from a rEFInd live system command line i did | 14:02 |
| Miki_J | bcfg boot add 2 fs0:\EFI\ubuntu\grubx64.efi "GRUB Loader" | 14:02 |
| Miki_J | it now boots to grub, but not xubuntu | 14:03 |
| Miki_J | it boots thru rEFInd, but not the windows boot loader | 14:04 |
| Miki_J | any ideas? | 14:04 |
| james1138 | Morning all. Hypothetical question. If I was wanting to tweak Xubuntu for speed... would applications with few or no dependencies that may run in the background be a consideration? | 14:06 |
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