Acer Aspire Switch 10 can't boot 14.04 LTS

[leona]

Fallen at first fence, I have created a bootable key, tested on my desktop to confirm it boots, I have disabled Secure boot on the tablet (by setting password), enabled f12 menu, moved usb cd to the top of the list, inserted key into usb port in keyboard, hit f12, only windows boot showed, ok I thought I try the usb OTG port with the correct cable, tried again, nothing, only windows boot manager, will need further research, hum, ran out of time tonight, will try tomorrow. night all.
Edit: just before going to bed I tried

Copy the bootia32.efi to /EFI/BOOT/

No joy, this wouldn't make it book, no change.
Further update, yes going to bed now!
I was being a total tool and had formatted the usb key to ext4 (my default setting), after formatting it correctly to FAT32 and writing the ISO to it, I can now boot to a grub command prompt, but that's it for tonight, I'll try t figure out how to get further tomorrow.

[halfnote52]

Fallen at first fence, I have created a bootable key, tested on my desktop to confirm it boots, I have disabled Secure boot on the tablet (by setting password), enabled f12 menu, moved usb cd to the top of the list, inserted key into usb port in keyboard, hit f12, only windows boot showed, ok I thought I try the usb OTG port with the correct cable, tried again, nothing, only windows boot manager, will need further research, hum, ran out of time tonight, will try tomorrow. night all.
Edit: just before going to bed I tried

No joy, this wouldn't make it book, no change.
Further update, yes going to bed now!
I was being a total tool and had formatted the usb key to ext4 (my default setting), after formatting it correctly to FAT32 and writing the ISO to it, I can now boot to a grub command prompt, but that's it for tonight, I'll try t figure out how to get further tomorrow.

I got 15.04 working GREAT on my Switch 10 except for Wifi and sound. Waiting for better drivers, and playing with Win10 in the meantime. (Switch 11 works PERFECTLY, after some fiddling. And no need for the bootia32.efi trick - it's core i3/i5.)

I used the bootia32.efi but here's the trick. Go to BIOS. Turn secureboot ON (Eeeyup. On.) Then go back to the menu where you ADD secure boot sources. Browse to the bootia32.efi, add it, give it a name like Liveboot or something, and then reboot, go back into BIOS, turn secure boot back OFF again, and the bootia option will still be available on the f12 menu.

Load up the live disc, and you're good.

Now here's the difference: I was wanting a 100% clean X/Ubuntu-only install so I then did a dd clone of the whole drive off to a .raw file on an external HD (saved Windows for later). I blew out the HD, installed Xubu 15.04, rebooted.

To do this, use the Ubiquity installer if you wanna install permanently (using the NO BOOTLOADER switch from the command prompt) and reboot.

At this point you STILL have to boot from live. Grub isn't ready yet. When you get to the grub choice screen, use the c option, use the linux command and the initrd command to pick out your drive, partition, root dir, kernel, etc.

You'll boot into the PROPER linux installation. You'll wanna compile 32-bit (Yep - THIRTY-TWO BIT) grub, even though the OS you're using is 64-bit.

I followed a great article by John Wells. http://www.jfwhome.com/2014/03/07/pe...mer-book-t100/

Upon googling it, the site's down and won't pull up, so I stuck a copy of google's cached version here: http://zombie-process.com/asust100.pdf (It printed funny. It's terrible. Zoom in.)

This (above) is for the Asus T100 and so there ARE some differences, but the basic stuff is pretty similar.

https://github.com/SWW13/rtl8723as fixes the keyboard. HOWEVER!!! There is a caveat. If you boot the system with the keyboard DETACHED, everything is ALWAYS fine.

If you boot it with it ATTACHED, it's fine until you detach it. Reattaching it will restore the keyboard, and the mouse buttons, but not touchpad movement. I think if it's attached when the system boots, a different driver gets loaded in the background, and takes over when the thing toggles.

Rotation is achieved easily with a CTRL+ALT+R keyboard shortcut attached to a script (I'll post mine for the Switch 11, which I got FULLY working with Xubu 11 later, and you can swap out the hardware names/IDs) . I didn't bother with auto-rotate because it annoys the hell out of me anyway, but you could map the same script to the ACPI event.

Onboard is the best Onscreen Keyboard. There IS a problem with the version of the lightdm greeter that ships with the disk. You have to update it to v2.X or it WILL NOT accept input from the onscreen keyboard. Luckily, it's in the repos.

Touchscreen dies on resume on the Switch 11. I dunno about the Switch 10. There's a sleep.d/resume script for that somewhere. I'll post mine on that, too, when I get the chance, but it's floating around the net somewhere, as well.

Cinnamon desktop on top of Xubuntu does the trick for me, for the Switch 11, as well as playing around on the Switch 10. Cinnamon seems to really like the touchscreen, and Thunar and the XFCE desktop stuff fills in the corners.

IF you get sound and/or WiFi working (the only things that don't for me on the Switch 10) PLEEEASE let us know. I've got the broadcom version, and if you're interested I have the BIN file from the Win8.1 driver package, but the NVRAM txt files floating around the internet DO NOT work with it. I kept swapping out BINs and TXTs and got the wifi to SEE an SSID, and maybe connect once or twice for a few minutes (usually only if another WiFi card was plugged into the USB to "goose" the network manager.)

Sound on this is Intel Baytrail with some sort of Realtek RTL codec. Work is progressing on drivers, but no joy for me yet. Again, my Switch 11 is working PERFECTLY, and if I could get the Switch 10 up and going, much like for you, it'd be a dream. Although Win10 on it is nice at the moment - I can use it with my Akai EIE Pro. ; )

Cheers, and good luck!

[leona]

I thought I would try this approach, but when I try the grub install I get

grub-install: error: /usr/lib/grub/i386-efi/modinfo.sh doesn't exist.

Well, I see people are well interested in this. I myself, also have bought the same device. It is truly a great device.
So well, I have something useful to say:
I got Archlinux booting and detecting the internal storage. There are some r/w errors for the eMMC internal storage but I did not figure out a solution for that.
So now how I did it:
I am using grub as a bootloader.
First I formated a USB flash drive to fat32 adn named it ARCH_201410 and downloaded the ISO file for arch, then I installed grub onto the drive:

# grub-install --target=i386-efi --efi-directory=<mountpoint>boot/efi/ --bootloader-id=arch_grub --recheck --debug

[leona]

Tried this approach too, but still just boots to a grub console, and that's it.

I got 15.04 working GREAT on my Switch 10 except for Wifi and sound. Waiting for better drivers, and playing with Win10 in the meantime. (Switch 11 works PERFECTLY, after some fiddling. And no need for the bootia32.efi trick - it's core i3/i5.)

I used the bootia32.efi but here's the trick. Go to BIOS. Turn secureboot ON (Eeeyup. On.) Then go back to the menu where you ADD secure boot sources. Browse to the bootia32.efi, add it, give it a name like Liveboot or something, and then reboot, go back into BIOS, turn secure boot back OFF again, and the bootia option will still be available on the f12 menu.

Load up the live disc, and you're good.

[leona]

Ok, seems my issue was with the .efi file I was using, even though I took it from a gparted.iso, it didn't work, so after a bit of googling I found the one from

https://github.com/jfwells/linux-asu...t/bootia32.efi

which gave me a grub menu, yay!
So I have Ubuntu Gnome 15 64bit liveUSB booting, now to try and install it.

Ok will my first install attempt failed with a fatal grub error,so I'll have to look at an alternative approach. I don't give up that easily.

[halfnote52]

I thought I would try this approach, but when I try the grub install I get

etc. etc.

# grub-install --target=i386-efi --efi-directory=<mountpoint>boot/efi/ --bootloader-id=arch_grub --recheck --debug

Try this instead:

sudo ../grub-install -d . --efi-directory /boot/efi/ --target=i386

In fact, here's the order that worked for me:


sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install git bison libopts25 libselinux1-dev autogen m4 autoconf help2man libopts25-dev flex libfont-freetype-perl automake autotools-dev libfreetype6-dev texinfo ia32-libs build-essential

(adjusting of course for different distributions' package names. I think I had to install a much larger package to get the ia32-libs?)

Then get the Grub source:

git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/grub.git

Now build it:

cd grub
./autogen.sh
./configure --with-platform=efi --target=i386
--program-prefix=""
make


And install to efi:

cd grub-core
sudo ../grub-install -d . --efi-directory /boot/efi/ --target=i386


This will create a directory, ‘gr ub’, in your EFI partition. We want to copy the gr ubia32.efi from there to the
location Ubuntu created during installation:

cd /boot/efi/EFI

sudo cp grub/grubia32.efi ubuntu/grubx64.efi

##VERY IMPORTANT to note the different file name above!

Then, go back to the BIOS, RE-enable secure boot, add a new secure boot source, browse to this directory, add it, name it, save it, go back and DIS-able secure boot again, reboot, go BACK into the bios, and set the newly names one as boot device #1

[leona]

I attempted to install 15.04 from the live USB stick, but it fails with a critical error when installing grub. So I rebooted the switch with the usb stick and dumped into the grub command line. I seem to be able to select the correct kernel and initramfs, but it still will not boot completely.

Can anyone give some advice on how to get this thing to install correctly?

This is as far as I've got so far too.

[halfnote52]

Originally Posted by miatawnt2b
I attempted to install 15.04 from the live USB stick, but it fails with a critical error when installing grub. So I rebooted the switch with the usb stick and dumped into the grub command line. I seem to be able to select the correct kernel and initramfs, but it still will not boot completely.

Can anyone give some advice on how to get this thing to install correctly?



This is as far as I've got so far too.

There's the problem in its entirety - you CAN'T install grub during the install. It won't work. You have to do it after the fact.

You have to install 15.04 WITHOUT grub while inside the LiveCD/usb. You'll want to run Ubiquity from the command line in a terminal, and feed it the no-bootloader switch.

That will install Ubuntu, yes, but it STILL won't boot correctly. You have to boot from the USB, and use the c option to MANUALLY select the HARD DRIVE'S version of the init and linux, and boot that way, and THEN, once you're in, compile and install the THIRTY-TWO bit grub bootloader (as per my instructions above.)

Cheers!

[halfnote52]

P.S. And if you're thinking that can't be right, it actually is - you'll be loading the 64-bit OS with the 32-bit bootloader.

[leona]

MANUALLY select the HARD DRIVE'S version of the init and linux

oh, ok, so where do I find out what I need to enter here?