Steve's blog

All of my improvements have been committed into the various Debian packages involved, and the latest release candidate for Jessie's debian-installer build (RC2) works just as well as my test builds on the Bay Trail system I've been using (Asus X205TA). Job done! :-)

I'm still hoping to maybe get more hardware support for this particular hardware included in Jessie, but I can't promise. The mixed EFI work has also improved things for a lot of Mac users, and I'm planning to write up a more comprehensive list of supported machines in the Debian wiki (for now).

There's now no need to use any of the older test installer images - please switch to RC2 for now. See http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/jessie_di_rc2/ for the images. If you want to install a 64-bit system with the 32-bit UEFI support, make sure you use the multi-arch amd64/i386 netinst or DVD. Otherwise, any of the standard i386 images should work for a 32-bit only system.

Upstreaming

My kernel patch to add the new /sys file was accepted upstream a while back, and has been in Linus' master branch for some time. It'll be in 4.0 unless something goes horribly wrong, and as it's such a tiny piece of code it's trivial to backport to anything remotely recent too.

I've also just seen that my patch for grub2 to use this new /sys file has been accepted upstream this week. Again, the change is small and self-contained so should be easy to copy across into other trees too.

Mixed EFI systems should now have better support across all distros in the near future, I hope.

02:44 :: # :: /debian/CDs :: 11 comments

Comments

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 6
Anonymous wrote on Mon, 30 Mar 2015 15:50

What's the new /sys file you added? Can you talk a little more about that?

Re: Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 6
Steve wrote on Mon, 30 Mar 2015 16:09

One of the problems with a mixed EFI system is that there is no easy way for userland programs to know whether they're running on top of a 32-bit EFI or a 64-bit EFI firmware. Clearly, most programs don't need to know! But there's a small set that do care, specifically boot loader installation programs like grub-install; it needs to know whether to generate and install grubx64.efi or grubia32.efi to make the system bootable.

The kernel already knows whether the underlying EFI firmware is 32- or 64-bit, so we just needed an extra interface to share that information with userland. I've added a tiny patch to create a new /sys file, following the style of the existing EFI kernel interfaces:

root@x205ta:/# cat /sys/firmware/efi/fw_platform_size
32

For what it's worth, the patch is at http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.efi/5229 and the corresponding patch for grub2 is at http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grub.git/commit/?id=1a33de8b5612f8d7ab344546f8a91fa814f712b5.

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 6
Simon Josefsson wrote on Mon, 30 Mar 2015 19:48

Can you say something how well the X205TA works with rc2 in general? Have the built-in mouse/keyboard issues been solved? Does builtin wifi works? Suspend/resume? Etc.

Thanks, Simon

Re: Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 6
Steve wrote on Tue, 31 Mar 2015 23:16

Hi Simon,

The keyboard and mouse work just fine, yes. In terms of other hardware, the news isn't yet so good. Playing right now, I don't have any of wifi, suspend/resume or audio working. It's going to take a while to get this machine fully supported with all features, I guess. :-/

There's a wiki page at https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Asus/X205TA where I'm hoping we can co-ordinate things. I'm updating it right now.

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 6
Carlos Peco wrote on Wed, 01 Apr 2015 07:34

Hi Steve,

Just saw in your blog that you were in Sydney not long ago... I would have bought you a beer or two :)

Quick question, and sorry for my ignorance: I managed to install your image from a USB stick, but without wifi support it can not go to the servers to get a proper installation (I have no X environment, for example). What can I do to have the wifi card detected during the install ?

thank you for your nice work !

Re: Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 6
Ravi wrote on Wed, 01 Apr 2015 15:28

Hi Carlos: I hope it might work for you (from https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Asus/X205TA): You will have to get the files downloaded on other computer and shift to X205TA via USB 1. get vivid rc6 kernel from http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/ 2. put other files as mentioned on DebianOn link and change config file

Inbuilt wifi should work

Re: Re: Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 6
Carlos Peco wrote on Thu, 02 Apr 2015 03:01

Hi Ravi,

I'm downloading the DVD iso and will install from there. The CD iso worked, so the DVD will work as well !

fingers crossed, thank you for the info.

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 6
Andrea wrote on Wed, 01 Apr 2015 16:05

Hi Steve, how can non-develepers people help? ex: kernel testing, options in kernel testing, configurations to test? thanks for your fantastic work!!!

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 6
LordTermor wrote on Sun, 12 Apr 2015 08:38

Hi Steve. I have a Samsung ATIV SmartPC(Intel Clover Trail) tablet. I booted into Debian installer with your improve distro, but my usb mouse and keyboard connected via usb hub isn't working so I can do nothing to start install process. Any suggestions? I want to try system itself.

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 6
Brian wrote on Mon, 13 Apr 2015 16:46

Tried the amd64-i386-netinst and the mac-i386-netinst CD images of RC2 on my Mac Mini (A1176/"Mid 2007"/Macmini2,1) and both of them booted the installer successfully. Didn't actually do an install, as I already have an install on it that I use on daily basis, but I will probably try later this week or next week.

Re: UEFI Debian installer work for Jessie, part 6
Fut wrote on Tue, 21 Apr 2015 13:00

I tried debian-jessie-DI-rc3-i386-xfce-CD-1 on my Lenovo Miix 2 8" tablet, I booted the installer successfully with a little change in grub.cfg (set timing for boot into installer) because I have 1 usb port, so I can't connect keyboard. The installer detected hard-drive and partitions, touch screen works fine. If someone adds virtualkeyboard for installer this will be so fine :) Thank you so much!

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