X86 tablet install, horrible UEFI firmware

Bugattikid2012 · 2014-10-25 21:51:53

So I've got a Dell Latitude 10 tablet (given to me, not my choice of pick) and it's got Winderp$ 8 on it. Works alright, but 1) I want Arch on it 2) The network drivers for it suck. Horribly. Not sure what the issue is, but I think an Arch install will fix it. The problem? It's UEFI only, no Legacy backwards compatibility to BIOS. Booting to my multiboot USB doesn't work, nor does USB disc drive, or anything else I've tried. As I said, it's got HORRID firmware. Dell made it, and it's limited to minor booting. It'll boot to USB, but I've yet to get a successful boot. When I set my Multiboot USB for UEFI mode and attempt to boot to it via the tablet, it works... for about 3 seconds. Once it gets to the selection menu, (aka boot options, for Arch it would be wether you want to boot/install x86/i686, do mem test, etc etc) it completely freezes up. Probably related to UEFI compatibility or something in the .ISO, or the firmware just sucks that much more. Anyways, because of all my troubles with getting this to work, even if there was a way to edit a .ISO to make it bootable, I don't want to risk it. If I don't have my tools working, then if I screw up the bootloader or something, I'm screwed. So, what am I going to do about it? Install to an SD card and boot to the SD card via UEFI menu, so that I keep everything that could mess up the boot ability of the tablet off the tablet, for easier fixes/less troubles with the tablet itself. Why don't I go ahead and install it to the SD card? Well, I tried, and lsblk doesn't see it. So, if I can't install via live .ISO, maybe Virtual Box works? Well... maybe. I'm trying to do a VM boot using UEFI (this is key, as the tablet must use UEFI boot to the SD card), but it sends me to a shell prompt every time, showing me how bad it failed. I tried googling this, and while I found people with similar problems I don't think their solutions would work for me. They might, but honestly I don't quite know how to do them. This is the one I am talking about. I tried a bit of googling, but I don't know what it means by booting an emergency system, and google doesn't seem to know either. I'm sure that the answer is out there somewhere but I am extremely busy at the moment, as I have deadlines shadowing me everywhere I go. School, Mock Trial, and a few others. I'm not too familiar with Arch either, however I am certain I want to use it. I've used Ubuntu for a while, but Arch is really starting to appeal to me now. Great documentation, and it seems to have better forums than Ubuntu, which is strange because Ubuntu is supposed to be known for their forums. Anyways I was thinking the following links could be of use to me. It appears the simplest solution would be to install to a VM, then export it to the SD card, then attempt to set it up to work on the different hardware, as explained in the following links:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mo … al_machine

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/VirtualBox

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mi … w_hardware

And the beginner's install page of course.

Sorry for the wall of text.

TL;DR: x86 tablet, attempting to install Arch, because of situation, forced to install to SD card via another computer (NOT the tablet I'm trying to use), running into issues with UEFI boot in VM and I want alternative methods that I can try to get the job done, or a fix to my current one. I just want this tablet running Arch instead of Winderp$.

Thanks for all the help everyone!

Last edited by Bugattikid2012 (2014-12-15 03:40:51)

olive · 2014-10-26 07:59:27

If you want to get help please come to the point with precise questions.

Normally, once Linux boot, the UEFI is not used anymore (or not in an important way, you can pass noefi to the kernel if you want it to be completely UEFI unaware), just like BIOS. Most probably, if you can launch grub;gummiboot,etc... your problem is not UEFI related. Here is a summary of common problems you can encounter with UEFI:

1) Secure boot. Be sure it is disabled before booting
2) Some tablet have a i386 UEFI which is not supported by the installation disk of most distributions, including arch. But it is possible to proceed by hand (you have to compile a i386 version of grub) and if the processor is x64 compatible (which is almost certain nowadays), you can launch a 64 bit kernel with grub (but not EFISTUB).
3) The UEFI boot menu. Sometimes it is not well implemented or not at all. But once you manage to launch something, gummiboot for example, you can launch what you want from that. You should also be comfortable with efibootmgr.

Also, if you boot something in VirtualBox, it boots in a completely emulated environment. You can without problems put Virtualbox in BIOS mode on a UEFI-only system (or vice-versa). What will be seen is the emulated VirtualBox computer, not the real one.

Last edited by olive (2014-10-26 08:03:32)

ANOKNUSA · 2014-10-26 14:43:43

Bugattikid2012 wrote:

I just want this tablet running Arch instead of Winderp$.

olive wrote:

Some tablet have a i386 UEFI which is not supported by the installation disk of most distributions, including arch.

If you bought a tablet designed to run Windows RT, this is almost certainly the case. I can't offer any more help than that.

Gusar · 2014-10-26 15:13:36

ANOKNUSA wrote:

If you bought a tablet designed to run Windows RT, this is almost certainly the case.

Windows RT is for ARM, not x86.

The Dell Latitude 10 uses an Atom Z2760. It does indeed use 32bit UEFI, so manual modifying of a LiveUSB is required. I'd go for syslinux instead of grub though. No compiling necessary, the Arch syslinux package contains a 32bit UEFI loader in the efi32 directory.

However, UEFI is only the first hurdle, there's a much bigger one after you get Linux to boot - graphics. The Atom Z2760 uses the infamous PowerVR GPU. The only support that exists is the kernel gma500_gfx modesetting driver. There's no X and no mesa driver to provide 2D accel, 3D accel or accelerated video playback.

All in all, the experience of using Linux on this thing will not be a pleasant one.

Bugattikid2012 · 2014-10-27 02:14:06

Hmm, weird, I didn't get an email about your replies... oh well. Thanks all.

Forgot to mention Secure Boot is disabled.

I don't think the boot menu is the issue, (it might be) because as previously stated, when I get to the boot menu to choose if I want to run the OS, and which settings I want to choose, it displays everything properly for ONE frame. That might be related to the graphical error one of you is talking about. Regarding that issue, will it work at all? If so, how bad will it be? From what it sounds like, the lack of 2D and 3D acceleration limits me to terminal shells, am I correct? If so, then I guess I'll stop trying here.

If it won't run Linux, how about Android? I did a quick check but didn't find anything relevant...

Thanks for the help guys.

Gusar · 2014-10-27 18:24:04

Bugattikid2012 wrote:

From what it sounds like, the lack of 2D and 3D acceleration limits me to terminal shells, am I correct?

Not at all. Most environments (lightweight WMs, LXDE, XFCE, even KDE) run quite well without any acceleration. It's just Gnome Shell and Unity (arguably the most tablet-friendly) that require 3D accel. The big problem is video playback, without acceleration it's very CPU intensive.

Bugattikid2012 · 2014-10-28 02:47:38

Gusar wrote:

Bugattikid2012 wrote:
From what it sounds like, the lack of 2D and 3D acceleration limits me to terminal shells, am I correct?
Not at all. Most environments (lightweight WMs, LXDE, XFCE, even KDE) run quite well without any acceleration. It's just Gnome Shell and Unity (arguably the most tablet-friendly) that require 3D accel. The big problem is video playback, without acceleration it's very CPU intensive.

Ah, alright, that's not an issue (hopefully) as I was going to use a DE designed for mobile tablets anyways. Hopefully the two I had picked out to compare and contrast at a later date do not require acceleration. Would I have full use of this tablet other than games with no acceleration? I'd still be watching YT and other things as well on it, but it'd be pretty much just for notes, and internet mainly.

Bugattikid2012 · 2014-10-30 14:19:38

bump

Bugattikid2012 · 2014-12-12 06:39:08

Well, I just spent 15+ minutes writing a response when my Arch login timed out.... (FUUUU) I'll reproduce what I said the best I can...

So I know this is an old thread, but relevant info is in here. That's why I'm picking it up again. If I'm violating any strange rules, please inform me before you flat out delete this post.

First off, I'd like to thank everyone for helping me previously as they did. Second, I'd like to apologize for waiting so long to post a reply, I've been a bit busy.

So basically the way I see it there's only two things that can be happening.

1) I'm having keyboard/USB driver issues, therefore my keyboard isn't working when I'm in the grub menu of the .ISO (aka install i383, i686, x86-64, mem test, etc...)

2) 32 bit UEFI firmware issues with my boot loader (in the installer .ISO case, that'd be GRUB afaik)

So in case you didn't read anything posted above, I'll recap a tad. Got an x86 tablet. It sucks pretty bad, but it's got pretty good internals. I'm attempting to put Arch on an SD card on this tablet. It'll never have 2D or 3D video acceleration due to some proprietary graphics. This tablet is the Dell Latitude 10, and it was discontinued for some pretty obvious issues if you've ever owned one (it was given to me, not my choice).

The reason I want it on the SD card is because I've had some pretty bad issues with grub in the past being absolutely retarded, and I really gotta be careful here. If I can't boot to anything, then I can't access my tools, which pretty much bricks my tablet unless I pay quite a hefty fee to get it fixed. So... ALMOST EVERYTHING must go on the SD card, bootloader especially. I'm fine with having a partition of just data, NOT SYSTEM FILES, on a separate partition on the SSD in the tablet.

Now, down to the possible solutions:

1) Modify the .ISO installer and add drivers for the keyboard/USB ports, but I don't think this is really the issue due to other mentioned problems...

2) Modify the .ISO installer to have a bootloader that is compatible with 32 bit UEFI firmware, therefore allowing possible issues to go away... I think there's simpler options and better options out there, but this is probably going to fix the issue

3) Make a 32 bit UEFI multiboot USB. I have one that I'm pretty sure works for this, but it'd need a tad of work to work for my intended purpose. Basically, I'm using easy2boot for my multiboot USB solutions. I can take an .ISO and convert it to a .partIMG and it'll work with UEFI booting, and it seems to work with 32 bit UEFIs as well, but that could just be my memory failing me... Anyways this could pretty much work hand in hand with the next option...

4) Works hand in hand as #3. Modify something (it's pretty late and I don't remember exactly what I'm trying to say here) to make the OS work without using the UEFI as much as possible. Once it gets to a working 32 bit UEFI compatible menu, it'll pretty much drop UEFI from there and run off the OS... If I can get a USB multiboot to work, then this would be the next step, which would pretty much solve all my problems, I think.

What I'm hoping happens is this: I want some replies telling me where I can start looking to get this working, and some more info on what will be needed on my part to do this. Then, I can start googling and researching it on my end. This will basically make both of our lives easier, by cutting off potentially hours of my time and allowing me to learn something, and reducing time spent on your end to a few minutes (hopefully).

I'll be frank about it, I haven't used Linux in quite a while due to my games requiring Winderp$ to run (WINE won't work). I've barely even used Arch, however I've taught myself everything I know about computers up to this point, so why stop here? I really like Arch and I see quite a few potential things I can do with it that can't be done on other Distros so I'm really wanting to give it a try. What better way than jumping right into it?

I'm not asking for /REALLY/ detailed responses, but at least give me a general outline of everything I'll have to do, therefore allowing me to have something to go on when I'm researching this. Then I'll be able to learn from it, and I'll be able to do something even when I don't have any new replies. I'm looking to learn, not just fix an issue.

Thank you for EVERYTHING that has been and will be contributed to this thread, I sincerely appreciate it and understand the time it takes to explain this to me.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2014-12-12 09:44:47

Are you aware that the Arch .iso uses gummiboot and will boot up in EFI-mode?

Your aversion to the use of a carriage return makes it difficult to tell...

Sounds to me like the firmware is absolute garbage and you're out of luck here.

I could be wrong though.

Bugattikid2012 · 2014-12-12 18:16:20

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Are you aware that the Arch .iso uses gummiboot and will boot up in EFI-mode?
Your aversion to the use of a carriage return makes it difficult to tell...
Sounds to me like the firmware is absolute garbage and you're out of luck here.
I could be wrong though.

I thought gummiboot might work, but I thought that the Arch .ISO wouldn't work with 32 bit UEFI as according to other posts in this thread. Has the bootloader in the .ISO changed recently? I'll assume it has, and I'll give it a try later today with a new .ISO. (Note, I understand that there's no need for a new .ISO for new packages and everything, that's all done with pacman -syu or whatever, but I'm assuming the bootloader on the .ISO might have changed.)

Last edited by Bugattikid2012 (2014-12-12 18:32:00)

Bugattikid2012 · 2014-12-24 21:33:47

Ok so it's still not working. I've burnt the latest update to a CD and tried to boot off of it, however the stupid firmware remains to be stupid. I've removed all boot options except for the Arch option, yet it continues to boot to Winderp$ 8. Ugh.

I'm still hoping someone can help me make sense of my idea of migrating the OS from one PC to another. That seems like the best method in my opinion. The problems? I'd have to figure out how to force Arch to install to a SD card, and I'd have to do it on a 64 bit PC. Then I'd have to migrate it to the new hardware along with the 32 bit Architecture. Can someone help me figure out what needs to be done?

The only useful things I can find are here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mi … installing

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/mi … w_hardware

And they don't seem all that useful to my given scenario. Can someone basically break out what is relevant to me? Thanks.

M4R10zM0113R · 2015-03-17 18:51:24

Bugattikid2012 wrote:

Ok so it's still not working. I've burnt the latest update to a CD and tried to boot off of it, however the stupid firmware remains to be stupid. I've removed all boot options except for the Arch option, yet it continues to boot to Winderp$ 8. Ugh.
I'm still hoping someone can help me make sense of my idea of migrating the OS from one PC to another. That seems like the best method in my opinion. The problems? I'd have to figure out how to force Arch to install to a SD card, and I'd have to do it on a 64 bit PC. Then I'd have to migrate it to the new hardware along with the 32 bit Architecture. Can someone help me figure out what needs to be done?
The only useful things I can find are here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mi … installing
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/mi … w_hardware
And they don't seem all that useful to my given scenario. Can someone basically break out what is relevant to me? Thanks.

It's that time of the year to bump an old thread!

I have a similar tablet (HP Envy x2 g050la) which basically contains the same issue (UEFI32), but I got to run the Grub on UEFI32, no kernel.
Still trying to figure out how to get the kernel to either accept it or... Hope someday bay trail A$$toms go for linux support.

There's an interesting work ongoing for an asus T100 on http://www.taylorbyte.com/docs/wiki/arc … fi-gpt-usb

Sadly nobody has worked around the kernel issue / rest of impending issues to get a running machine under this line of processors.

Happy St. Patricks!

Last edited by M4R10zM0113R (2015-03-17 18:54:47)

Bugattikid2012 · 2015-03-17 20:32:17

M4R10zM0113R wrote:

Bugattikid2012 wrote:
Ok so it's still not working. I've burnt the latest update to a CD and tried to boot off of it, however the stupid firmware remains to be stupid. I've removed all boot options except for the Arch option, yet it continues to boot to Winderp$ 8. Ugh.
I'm still hoping someone can help me make sense of my idea of migrating the OS from one PC to another. That seems like the best method in my opinion. The problems? I'd have to figure out how to force Arch to install to a SD card, and I'd have to do it on a 64 bit PC. Then I'd have to migrate it to the new hardware along with the 32 bit Architecture. Can someone help me figure out what needs to be done?
The only useful things I can find are here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mi … installing
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/mi … w_hardware
And they don't seem all that useful to my given scenario. Can someone basically break out what is relevant to me? Thanks.
It's that time of the year to bump an old thread!
I have a similar tablet (HP Envy x2 g050la) which basically contains the same issue (UEFI32), but I got to run the Grub on UEFI32, no kernel.
Still trying to figure out how to get the kernel to either accept it or... Hope someday bay trail A$$toms go for linux support.
There's an interesting work ongoing for an asus T100 on http://www.taylorbyte.com/docs/wiki/arc … fi-gpt-usb
Sadly nobody has worked around the kernel issue / rest of impending issues to get a running machine under this line of processors.
Happy St. Patricks!

I'd like to thank you for bumping this up again, I hope eventually we can find a solution. I've moved on to an old laptop I have (~2007 Dell Core Duo), and it's working fine except for the network card. I've decided to buy an external one anyways, so I'm just waiting for an opportunity to purchase it. Any chance I could get the internal one working as well (I have reasons)? Is there a list of supported network cards for Linux somewhere? It doesn't seem to work on an Ubuntu LiveUSB nor on my Arch install, so I'm curious as to if it's worth my effort or not.

Hopefully UEFI will become as supported as BIOS is, so we don't have these problems. Best of luck to you!

M4R10zM0113R · 2015-03-18 12:58:06

Bugattikid2012 wrote:

M4R10zM0113R wrote:
Bugattikid2012 wrote:
Ok so it's still not working. I've burnt the latest update to a CD and tried to boot off of it, however the stupid firmware remains to be stupid. I've removed all boot options except for the Arch option, yet it continues to boot to Winderp$ 8. Ugh.
I'm still hoping someone can help me make sense of my idea of migrating the OS from one PC to another. That seems like the best method in my opinion. The problems? I'd have to figure out how to force Arch to install to a SD card, and I'd have to do it on a 64 bit PC. Then I'd have to migrate it to the new hardware along with the 32 bit Architecture. Can someone help me figure out what needs to be done?
The only useful things I can find are here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mi … installing
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/mi … w_hardware
And they don't seem all that useful to my given scenario. Can someone basically break out what is relevant to me? Thanks.
It's that time of the year to bump an old thread!
I have a similar tablet (HP Envy x2 g050la) which basically contains the same issue (UEFI32), but I got to run the Grub on UEFI32, no kernel.
Still trying to figure out how to get the kernel to either accept it or... Hope someday bay trail A$$toms go for linux support.
There's an interesting work ongoing for an asus T100 on http://www.taylorbyte.com/docs/wiki/arc … fi-gpt-usb
Sadly nobody has worked around the kernel issue / rest of impending issues to get a running machine under this line of processors.
Happy St. Patricks!

I'd like to thank you for bumping this up again, I hope eventually we can find a solution. I've moved on to an old laptop I have (~2007 Dell Core Duo), and it's working fine except for the network card. I've decided to buy an external one anyways, so I'm just waiting for an opportunity to purchase it. Any chance I could get the internal one working as well (I have reasons)? Is there a list of supported network cards for Linux somewhere? It doesn't seem to work on an Ubuntu LiveUSB nor on my Arch install, so I'm curious as to if it's worth my effort or not.
Hopefully UEFI will become as supported as BIOS is, so we don't have these problems. Best of luck to you!

You could try searching for it in this extensive list https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiD … sSupported or maybe even attempt to make it work on your own, with this kind of example: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Wifi.

Although, that's a completely different topic on this subject, I'd like to see: if it ever manages to bypass IA32 UEFI, would it even support the internal hardware? There's some people trying to debug it out for the T100 and similar models. Those URLs would be a good start if it ever comes up to relevance to someone willing to get on the task of hacking into it.

Last edited by M4R10zM0113R (2015-03-18 13:01:01)

feelinblue · 2015-05-19 18:44:34

So I have the dell venue 8 pro, which also has a 32 bit uefi. After using the interwebs and various search engines, I managed to get arch to sort of boot.
I forgot where I found it but, here there's a 32bit uefi file which if you put it with the other EFI files manages to load grub.
So from grub I manually loaded vmlinux and initrd(64 bit for both), and it manages to boot up, but ends up running rootfs after doing the ERROR: /dev/disk/by-label crap.
Just wanted to let y'all know if it manages to help. However I am stuck at this and my google fu is exhausted.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-10-25 21:51:53

X86 tablet install, horrible UEFI firmware

#2 2014-10-26 07:59:27

Re: X86 tablet install, horrible UEFI firmware

#3 2014-10-26 14:43:43

Re: X86 tablet install, horrible UEFI firmware

#4 2014-10-26 15:13:36

Re: X86 tablet install, horrible UEFI firmware

#5 2014-10-27 02:14:06

Re: X86 tablet install, horrible UEFI firmware

#6 2014-10-27 18:24:04

Re: X86 tablet install, horrible UEFI firmware

#7 2014-10-28 02:47:38

Re: X86 tablet install, horrible UEFI firmware

#8 2014-10-30 14:19:38

Re: X86 tablet install, horrible UEFI firmware

#9 2014-12-12 06:39:08

Re: X86 tablet install, horrible UEFI firmware

#10 2014-12-12 09:44:47

Re: X86 tablet install, horrible UEFI firmware

#11 2014-12-12 18:16:20

Re: X86 tablet install, horrible UEFI firmware

#12 2014-12-24 21:33:47

Re: X86 tablet install, horrible UEFI firmware

#13 2015-03-17 18:51:24

Re: X86 tablet install, horrible UEFI firmware

#14 2015-03-17 20:32:17

Re: X86 tablet install, horrible UEFI firmware

#15 2015-03-18 12:58:06

Re: X86 tablet install, horrible UEFI firmware

#16 2015-05-19 18:44:34

Re: X86 tablet install, horrible UEFI firmware

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