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#1 2014-04-13 17:29:04

decaren
Member
Registered: 2009-04-17
Posts: 24

Surface Pro Installation

Hello all and it's good to be back. I haven't used Arch in a few years or linux for that fact as everything at work required OSX or Windows. Things have changed and I've been able to switch back to Linux. I've been running Ubuntu on my Surface Pro (kinda) but miss the streamlined Arch distro. So I've been doing a little research and last night decided to pull the trigger. I made a bootable SD card image and booted the image. I made it through setting up the wireless (I thought). Set up the partitions and entered the

pacstrap -i /mnt base command

I get a screen full of error: failed retrieving file ....

ip link show mlan0

returns

mlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
ping -c 3 www.google.com
ping: unknown host www.google.com

I had read in a thread somewhere that they feel the Marvell wifi was loading but not fully. I can use wifi-menu and see the wireless networks and choose one. I do have the latest firmware from Marvell (usb8797_uapsta.bin) but I don't know how to load it for the live image. So I would like to use this thread to address all the surface pro issues for installation with hopes of eventually creating a surface pro install wiki. To address later down the road, my power cover doesn't work as a keyboard. It works in the boot menu from the SD card but not once the image loads. I've just been using my Apple usb keyboard. Also I have a Netgear WMA1000M usb wifi adapter but that doesn't even show up in iw dev. Granted that is connected to the USB hub built into the Apple keyboard and lsusb does see booth the hub and the WMA1000M. So any help would be greatly appreciated.

Last edited by decaren (2014-04-13 17:54:19)

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#2 2014-04-13 18:04:34

Head_on_a_Stick
Member
From: London
Registered: 2014-02-20
Posts: 7,655
Website

Re: Surface Pro Installation

decaren wrote:

I can use wifi-menu and see the wireless networks and choose one.

What happens then? Is there an error message?
If wifi-menu can "see" the connections, your driver is up & loaded.
If wifi-menu is not connecting, there is an alternative method given.

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#3 2014-04-14 04:56:31

decaren
Member
Registered: 2009-04-17
Posts: 24

Re: Surface Pro Installation

I had tried the alternative method as well, but haven't gotten any further. 

iw dev
phy#0
	Interface mlan0
		ifindex 2
		wdev 0x1
		addr 28:18:78:43:37:21
		type managed

Then

ip link set mlan0 up
ip link show mlan0
2: mlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 28:18:78:43:37:21 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
dmesg | grep firmware

produced nothing.  I do know that you have to use the usb8797_uapsta.bin firmware on Ubuntu.  Actually 13.10 works out of the box and the usb8797_uapsta.bin is not the one released from Marvell themselves.  I did see people complaining of frequent disconnections.  I did not experience that at all using Ubuntu with Marvell's firmware.

iw dev mlan0 scan | grep SSID

did produce a list of wireless networks

wpa_supplicant -B -i mlan0 -c <(wpa_passphrase "SSID" "WPA2 Key(my network is WPA2)"
Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant

dhcpcd mlan0
dhcpcd[615]: version 6.3.2 starting
dhcpcd[615]: mlan0: waiting for carrier
dhcpcd[615]: timed out
dhcpcd[615]: exited

Last edited by decaren (2014-04-14 13:27:33)

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#4 2014-04-14 13:41:06

decaren
Member
Registered: 2009-04-17
Posts: 24

Re: Surface Pro Installation

Late last night (early this morning) I got the networking to work.  It took me awhile to replicate the issues but I was able to figure it out.  Apparently, and I don't know if it's only with the Marvell wireless device, but once you initiate a scan, the card times out on everything.  So using both

wifi-menu mlan0
iw dev mlan0 scan | grep SSID

will hang onto your wireless and cause it to timeout when trying to connect.  Now when I boot if I run through

ip link set mlan0 up
wpa_supplicant -B -i mlan0 -c <(wpa_passphrase "SSID" "WPA2KEY")
dhcpcd mlan0

and nothing else it attaches to my network with no issue.  So networking solved at this point.  I will try to post up about keyboard issues later.  I did notice going through dmesg that ACPI does recognize the second battery and lsusb reveals several HID (Human Input Devices).  I just need to figure out which is which.  For now I will continue on with the installation as I was successful in running

pacstrap -i /mnt base

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#5 2014-04-15 19:41:25

decaren
Member
Registered: 2009-04-17
Posts: 24

Re: Surface Pro Installation

I made it through install this morning.  I'm running KDE and so far so good.  I'm no further with hardware then I was a couple of days ago.  I've pretty much spent all day trying to figure out where I go from here.  I still have no keyboard and worst of all I have no wifi again.  Now that I'm booting into KDE I'm using NetworkManager instead of dhcpcd.  But of course NetworkManager scans pretty much the first thing it does.  So back to the original issues, if the card scans it no longer will connect to the wifi.  I could work around this if I only connected to one network.  Unfortunately I will be connecting to no less than 12 networks with work depending on which of the 12 locations I am working at that day.  So does anyone have any idea on this one? 

On another note, still no power cover keyboard.  I don't care as much about the trackpad (I actually turn it off in Windows) because the touch screen worked out of the box and after installing Bluez 5.17 the Arc Mouse Surface Edition works as well.  I could only find one topic on the forum about the surface keyboard covers and it pointed to an Ubuntu forum topic.  I read through that and was stopped at one section for seeing the input. 

# cat /dev/hidrawX

That should have allowed me to see the input from what I understand but nothing.  I had one that had my current keyboard.  I'm thoroughly confused on that issue as well. 

Other than that everything else seems to be working for the most part.  Bluetooth is a little sketchy coming out of sleep and pen input doesn't work which I was never excited about anyway.  But the keyboard and wifi are my biggest issues.  It looks funny carrying a surface with a separate USB keyboard and having to save files and boot into Windows to send them sucks.  I have to do the same thing with OSX, but at least if I could get a working keyboard in all the OS's I could use a USB wifi dongle for a while.  The keyboard does work in OSX though.

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#6 2014-04-15 20:17:20

Head_on_a_Stick
Member
From: London
Registered: 2014-02-20
Posts: 7,655
Website

Re: Surface Pro Installation

Have you seen the post on the Arch home page about PS/2 keyboard support? May be related to your issue... wink

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#7 2014-04-15 20:29:20

tomk
Forum Fellow
From: Ireland
Registered: 2004-07-21
Posts: 9,839

Re: Surface Pro Installation

decaren wrote:

Now that I'm booting into KDE I'm using NetworkManager instead of dhcpcd.

Why? KDE doesn't depend on networkmanager.

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#8 2014-04-16 02:47:02

decaren
Member
Registered: 2009-04-17
Posts: 24

Re: Surface Pro Installation

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Have you seen the post on the Arch home page about PS/2 keyboard support? May be related to your issue... wink

I wish but this seems to be just related to the power cover.  From reading through a bunch of ubuntu forum threads today I decided to stop by my friend's house who has a regular type cover.  Works like a champ with Ubuntu using Ubuntu Forums member PointSource's patched kernels.  Using the same exact setup, my power cover is dead in the water.  The actual battery of it works great though.

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#9 2014-04-16 02:53:17

decaren
Member
Registered: 2009-04-17
Posts: 24

Re: Surface Pro Installation

tomk wrote:
decaren wrote:

Now that I'm booting into KDE I'm using NetworkManager instead of dhcpcd.

Why? KDE doesn't depend on networkmanager.

I wanted the graphical interface from within KDE.  I'm trying to catch myself back up, but it just doesn't seem to be working.  Plus right now I'm fighting a loosing battle. https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69661

I think I'm going to have to put this on the shelf for a while and just work with windows and osx.  On the plus side I think I'll be putting Arch on my old laptop with Ubuntu 12.04 on it.

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#10 2014-04-17 23:54:02

khalaan
Member
Registered: 2014-04-17
Posts: 2

Re: Surface Pro Installation

I believe the type cover fix will work in this case, just adding an id and binding for power cover (Bus 004 Device 007: ID 045e:07da Microsoft Corp. )

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#11 2015-09-08 02:23:03

JoeFri85
Member
Registered: 2015-09-08
Posts: 2

Re: Surface Pro Installation

I'm also having issues with the wireless on my surface, figured I'd share my workaround for anyone having issues.  I went to install Arch on my surface pro but would crash every time I tried to run the pacstrap, I also had an issue with not being able to boot from my SD card, simply wouldn't read it till it was fully booted so I have to boot from a USB, luckily I'm not having problems with the type cover.  To work around my wifi problems and no second USB port I ended up using using an SD card as a mirror image, mirroring the partition sizes on both the SD and the hard drive and ran the pacstrap, installed dosfstools (and whatever else I could think of) and then used clonezilla to clone both the boot and root partitions to the hard drive and finished configuring on the surface. Learned a lot in the process.  Now I can use a USB wifi stick to get a wireless connection that doesn't crash the system.  Still looking around to see if there is a driver/firmware fix, being limited to one USB port blows but it will do for now.

Also, for anyone that tries this method, don't take any shortcuts before doing the pacstrap command. If the boot partition doesn't get mounted with the root partition before the pacstrap, the Kernel version doesn't get written to the boot partition and will never boot. There may be a few packages that need to be installed to the image before cloning over to ensure you can configure your USB stick, but theoretically, you can install as many packages as you want before cloning over to the hard drive, so if you think you are going to need it, install it.

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#12 2015-09-08 22:23:32

WorMzy
Forum Moderator
From: Scotland
Registered: 2010-06-16
Posts: 11,750
Website

Re: Surface Pro Installation

Thank you for bringing some closure to this topic, JoeFri85, and welcome to the Arch Linux forums.

As this is an old topic, I am going to close it now, as per our policy.

Closing.


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