Steve's blog

I've spent more time on the integration of 32-bit grub-efi with a 64-bit Debian system, and just published a new test image on pettersson. I've added:

a patch to the Linux kernel to add a new /sys file which exposes the size of the underlying UEFI platform (32- or 64-bit).
a patch to grub2 to read that new /sys file in grub-install to determine the right version of grub-efi to install by default
a patch to grub-installer to do similar

These remove the manual steps that were necessary for a 64-bit installation with the previous build. I've just used this exact image (and a network mirror) to install a fully-functional 64-bit Gnome system on the X205TA, simply by selecting "64-bit install" from the GRUB menu and following prompts. Yay! Visit http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/efi-development/jessie-upload3/ to download and test the image.

Now, there's no guarantee that the kernel patch I've submitted to the linux-efi folks will be accepted in its current form, and even if it is I'll have to get it and the other code I've written accepted into the various packages and then into Jessie! But for now this image should work just fine for Bay Trail folks I hope!

WARNING: this CD is provided for testing only. Use at your own risk! If you have appropriate (U)EFI hardware, please try this image and let me know how you get on, via the debian-cd and debian-boot mailing lists.

For now, I'm going to pause development here. The core code I'm using to make these images is all in the debian-cd and d-i repos, and I'll push the other patches once I know they'll work with the kernel. But I've got a slew of other things that I need to work on in the next few weeks, in no particular order:

RC bugs filed against abcde
Sorting out Mac-only 32-bit netinst images (only EFI boot? without EFI?)
Regular openstack image generation for Jessie
Regular debian-live image generation for Jessie
...

I'm currently not planning to make all of Debian's amd64 images bootable using 32-bit UEFI like this image - I'm happy to leave this as just an option for our multi-arch i386/amd64 images (netinst or DVD only). I think that's a reasonable compromise here, and it's also the easiest thing for me to do with the current debian-cd build system.

Finally, apologies if you've asked me questions about the earlier images in this series and I've not responded yet. Fixing that ASAP!

02:49 :: # :: /debian/CDs :: 22 comments

Comments

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
Ravi wrote on Sun, 11 Jan 2015 15:32

Is it possible to add EDIMAX wifi card firmware? It will be very helpful for testing it.

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
Ravi wrote on Sun, 11 Jan 2015 16:15

Is it possible to add EDIMAX wifi card firmware? It will be very helpful for testing it.

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
Ravi wrote on Sun, 11 Jan 2015 16:16

Is it possible to add EDIMAX wifi card firmware? It will be very helpful for testing it.

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
Mathias wrote on Fri, 23 Jan 2015 12:58

Your new Images are awesome! Thanks a lot! They are now also working with my two older MacPros with 32bit EFI. With the old wheezy images I could only boot a newer MacPro but now I can reinstall the older ones too. So again: Thank you for this late Christmas gift!

Re: Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
Steve wrote on Fri, 23 Jan 2015 16:43

[posted and mailed]

Hi Mathias - which exact MacPros do you have, please? I'm forever struggling to find help with testing on Mac hardware...

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
Peter Glaskowsky wrote on Fri, 30 Jan 2015 01:06

Any way to turn this into a Live image? I've tried using Rufus to put it on a USB stick, but all it does is give me a Grub prompt. I am not a Linux wizard, alas, just looking for a way to run Debian from USB on a Bay Trail machine, of which I have several. Thanks in advance if you can help.

Re: Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
Steve wrote on Sat, 31 Jan 2015 09:40

Hi Peter,

Some of the debian-live folks are working on EFI booting at the moment; you'd probably be best talking to them about that.

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
paranic wrote on Tue, 10 Feb 2015 17:22

installed debian-jessie-UEFI-testing-netinst-i386-amd64-build3.iso on Zotac PI320 debian-jessie-UEFI-testing-netinst-i386-amd64-build3.iso success thanks!

Re: Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
paranic wrote on Tue, 10 Feb 2015 17:23

product page http://www.zotac.com/products/mini-pcs/zbox-p-series/product/zbox-p-series/detail/zbox-pi320-pico-1.html

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
cri wrote on Tue, 10 Feb 2015 23:26

Great! Thank you! I installed Debian on an Asus T100 with this image. There are glitches with firmware (wifi etc.), but booting and installing works great.

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
Tiago Daitx wrote on Mon, 16 Feb 2015 12:38

Successfully installed and booted a debian-jessie-UEFI-testing-netinst-i386-amd64-build3.iso into a mid-2007 MacMini (AKA MB139LL/A or Macmini2,1). Thanks!

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
Budi Sulistioadi wrote on Tue, 17 Feb 2015 13:22

Thanks for the image. Any workaround for the WiFi for the Asus X205TA? Would like to figure it out first before trying to install.

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
Hugues wrote on Fri, 27 Feb 2015 01:44

Hi Steve,

Thanks a lot for this. Just got my hands on a Asus X205TA and will try your spin in a few moments. You mentioned (cf http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/efi-development/jessie-upload3/) that it provides a fully functional desktop on a Asus X205TA. Does that include wifi? Does that mean you are using a kernel that includes the BCM43340/1 patch (cf https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/5534731/) ? Please excuse my ignorance if this as been discussed before ;) Do you also have a solution for sound (cf https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=773835).

Thanks!

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
Hugues wrote on Fri, 27 Feb 2015 02:35

Hi Steve,

Thanks!

Re: Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
Steve wrote on Sat, 28 Feb 2015 15:09

[Posted and mailed]

Hi!

Sorry, there's no special wifi support in these images. If that patch is easy to backport, the best thing to do would be to file a wishlist bug against the linux-image package and ask the kernel maintainers to add it for Jessie.

It seems Ben is already aware of the missing audio modules in #773835. Might be worth asking there again...

Finally, the images I've produced here are starting to get old. All of the work that went in here *should* also be functional in the current daily/weekly d-i builds if you'd like to try one of those too. RC2 should also have this stuff included when we do that release.

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
Rene wrote on Mon, 02 Mar 2015 20:13

Hi Steve,

thanks for your work on this! Using http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/efi-development/jessie-upload3/debian-jessie-UEFI-testing-netinst-i386-amd64-build3.iso I managed to install Jessie onto a Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet. The installer works almost flawlessly. Even the graphical installer, including touch input, works!

There is one glitch related to the internal eMMC flash. The kernel recently started exposing RPMB (Replay Protected Memory Block) partitions. Standard read/write operations will fail, only special IOCTLs are supported, leading to significant delays when parted is started. There is a Debian kernel bug report about this at https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=759656 where some commenters suggest a patch that causes unsupported operations to be silently dropped. I believe this is the wrong approach as these are indeed I/O errors. Instead, user space shouldn't attempt messing with RPMB partitions in the first place. The latter approach can apparently be implemented through modified udev rules which is discussed in this Ubuntu bug report https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+bug/1333140.

Do you see any chance of getting the latter patch into the installer images? It would make installation on Bay Trail machines a much smoother experience.

As for the installed system, there are a number of issues. Most annoyingly, the kernel fails to boot unless I enter the (firmware-provided) EFI boot menu first. Otherwise there is no output after the usual "Loading initial ramdisk" in GRUB. I suspect it may be related to the framebuffer setup or the EFI handover not working correctly, but my knowledge of EFI and early boot stages on x86 is too limited to debug this further. What would be the right place to discuss this?

Then there's obviously a lot of hardware built into the Venue 8 Pro that doesn't work out of the box. Wifi sort of works with an out-of-tree driver https://github.com/hadess/rtl8723bs. Other hardware (buttons, sound) needs extra kernel config options to be enabled. I hope I'll be able to test these with a kernel compiled from source soon. I take it I'd file wishlist bugs against linux-image if enabling the config options makes the hardware in question work?

Finally, the i915 driver appears to crash the kernel, so I'm booting with the "nomodeset i915.modeset=0" kernel parameters which causes X to fall back to the plain framebuffer driver. I'll need to investigate this further but like in the above EFI case I'd appreciate any pointers as to where to seek help with it.

One thing I'll probably do is setting up a wiki page to track bug reports/patches related to the Venue 8 Pro.

Thanks again,

Rene

Re: Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
Bailey wrote on Fri, 16 Oct 2015 08:10

Steve,

Thank you so much for dealing with this 32-bit EFI situation.

Yesterday, I bought a Bay Trail system (Zotac Zbox PI320 Pico) to replace a headless Raspberry Pi server. I bought it on a whim without researching the Linux situation first.

I booted multi arch netinst (from http://cdimage.debian.org/pub/debian-cd/current/multi-arch/iso-cd/debian-8.2.0-amd64-i386-netinst.iso) and installed 64-bit Jessie on it. I too then got stuck at the "Loading initial ramdisk" message and couldn't ping the server.

It turns out that if, before booting, I went into the Zotac bios and exited, then the system wouldn't get stuck on "Loading initial ramdisk".

I re-installed with 32-bit Jessie, and it doesn't get stuck at all.

It's a headless server, and all I really care about working are storage and ethernet. But as far as I can tell, everything is working perfectly now.

I do think it would be nice to have 32-bit EFI support in a Debian live image. It think it would be good to have around for backing up or repairing the system if needed.

I managed to get an Ubuntu 15.04 64-bit live image to boot (after copying bootia32.efi from https://github.com/jfwells/linux-asus-t100ta/blob/master/boot/bootia32.efi into the EFI/Boot directory on the usb drive), and I used Ubuntu live to back up the mmc drive before istalling Debian.

BTW, as far as I can tell, it still isn't possible to install Ubuntu on my device withtout a lot of post-install work to deal with the 32-bit EFI issue.

I pefer to run Debian anwyay.

Thanks again for making it possible to run Debian on my new server.

Bailey

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
William Bradley wrote on Wed, 11 Mar 2015 03:40

Installed this on a 64 bit HP Paviliion g7. Install went very smoothly. Thanks for the great work!

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
Juan A. wrote on Tue, 17 Mar 2015 11:59

instalada correctamente en un lenovo g50-30 uefi 32 bits y procesador 64 bits

gran trabajo

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 5
HLFH wrote on Fri, 20 Mar 2015 17:38

Thanks! Debian Jessie (testing & RC1) is stuck on a black screen on my Intel NUC. So, I will try your flavour.

Jessie RC2
Rk wrote on Sun, 29 Mar 2015 20:48

Seems this made it through to Jessie RC2. From the mailing list: * grub2: - Add support for running a 64-bit Linux kernel on a 32-bit EFI (#775202). - Fix UEFI boot failure with some firmware that returns incorrect paths (#735960).

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/03/msg00015.html

Congrats and thanks for making it happen.

Re: Jessie RC2
Steve wrote on Mon, 30 Mar 2015 02:28

Yup, I've tested the RC2 multi-arch netinst on my x205ta and I can confirm that all works OK. Just about to blog that in more detail... :-)

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