Since you guys likely frequent other Linux boards...

auntjemima

auntjemima

[H]ard DCOTM x2
Joined
Mar 1, 2014
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Have you guys seen or read anything about new attempts to install a 64bit Linux version on 64bit tablet running a 32bit UEFI?

I know that is a mouthful, but a while back I wanted to install Linux on my Dell Venue 8 Pro. Its a 64gb tablet and plenty fast at what it does, but I like to tinker and a tablet running Windows serves no purpose to me, so why not play around!

In the end it runs a 64bit chip, on a 32bit UEFI so it requires quite a bit of fiddlefucking and I just never managed to get it working, even with the 32bit efi files.

You guys see any murmurs in your travels?
 
I've mainly just seen threads about that being a difficult combination to get working without some hackery and echo your summation. Often, those threads don't have follow-up success posts, or they just go with a 32bit distro (which is starting to become more rare.)
 
Frobozz said:
I've mainly just seen threads about that being a difficult combination to get working without some hackery and echo your summation. Often, those threads don't have follow-up success posts, or they just go with a 32bit distro (which is starting to become more rare.)
Click to expand...

I even tried a 32bit distro with no luck. It installs, even dual boots, but it just won't install grub. Ever.
 
auntjemima said:
Thanks for this! I haven't read it all but there seems like lots of information. I want to boot Ubuntu and I guess I should have mentioned that. I'll try gentoo as it seems to be mentioned quite a bit. At this point I just want to get into Linux and mess around with it.

I may fail, but I will fail trying.
Click to expand...
steady on there :)
I recommend Gentoo to those that I know can handle it AND also to people I don't like.

you want the epitome of the meme's that Windows users throw as to what to expect with Linux, its Gentoo.... CLI everywhere, manual reading everywhere!!!!

That said though, the gentoo community is one of the most open and friendly out there, even really newbie questions are walked through (unlike there other distro's where there is a glass floor they look down on those trying and failing at what they perceive as basic).
Gentoo provides you will the tools to make your own distribution, Gentoo really is just portage & ebuilds & as a result you end up with EXACTLY what you asked for. Now whether it aligns with precisely what you wanted depends ;)
Gentoo is filled with tinkerers, people that will go out of their way to break their system just to see what it does. Once I got my Ryzen system stable I started messing around with LTO and out of 1000packages, only 18 would fail to build once I sorted the rest out. I had to disable this as gentoo enabled by default PIE

I have said it many a time here that distro's are more like patch levels of windows7... each machine is at a different patch level & that is what linux is like. Ubuntu might you a slightly older version of a library than say Fedora but at most distro drift by 6months (unless you deal with rh/centos/debian...) and this is no clearer than with gentoo with its roiling release... Whenever some distro does something funky, within a couple of hours it is working on gentoo, 6months its standard everywhere. Gentoo is like the zen of linux, once you grok it you see they are all one and hte same...

I linked teh gentoo forums because that is one of many discussion on the topic & the steps may seem "gentoo centric" but in reality it will perfectly align with upstream (grub, refind etc...) because gentoo only patches to work around build issues NOT because of some distribution philosophy.





I would recommend reading over that thread and a few like it and see if you can follow the steps to then apply to another distro
 
I guess I never really tried this on my Dell. It was a hipstreet tablet lol.. Either way, I used to run on the fast ring for Windows 10 beta releases. I havent used the tablet in a long time and I guess my beta build expired and the only way to fix it is get the proper Windows 10 build on usb stick and repair mine. Fuck it, I will go the Linux route instead. I hope this one is more friendly.
 
It went smoother than I remembered. After a bit of reading I was able to get a much smoother install. Plus I didn't have to use a mouse at all because the touch screen on this tablet actually works out of the box.

No wifi though.. but I hear this bay-trail atoms are known for that.
 
IMG_20180106_182000.jpg
 
No bueno. Same place as usual on the previous tablet. It cannot install ia32 efi files to /target/. If I run ubiquity -b in a terminal it runs the installer without installing a bootloader. However when running the next steps of

Code: 
sudo mount /dev/mmcblk2 /mnt

it tells me that the source or destination are mounted or busy. When both are not. I've tried umount on both as well as verifying (forget the command) and neither are being used or busy.

I'm done for today. Wife needs attention lol
 
It's weird, because I HAVE had that command work in the past. Not the entire tutorial, but I have had the mount portion work.
 
I'm laying here in bed thinking about this thing (strange? Maybe) and it just came to me. I've installed the OS properly now, just without grub. After a restart those mounted locations should no longer be busy! They were busy because I had just installed the OS so they were in use, even if they weren't listed as such.

Tomorrow I'll start it up from the livecd and see what happens.
 
Not much to report! I found a website of a guy that has installed many different Linux versions OOB on this same tablet and for Ubuntu 17.10 he says to just install it, but to do so with internet connection.

Unfortunately the livecd doesn't see my wifi card, or my broadcom chipped Linksys one. It does see my cheap ralink device and tries to connect to networks, but nothing happens. It just loads and loads... So I think until I get a wifi adapter that is functional on Ubuntu, I might be sol.


Until then, I am trying to install grub manually via Deb installers.
 
So, deb installers are a no go and I will explain as best I understand it.

I will start from the beginning.

When installing Linux you need to run it with ubiquity -b. This prevents the bootloader from installing. I have to do this because when it gets to installing the loader the Ubuntu install KNOWS I need an ia32.efi file and tries to install grub-efi-ia32 and grub-efi-ia32-bin files from an online repository. As mentioned in my previous comment, if I had internet all of this seems like it would be trivial. SEEMS like it would, and I will get into that more below. During the install I choose to do my own thing and create my boot parition (not an efi parition) and a normal / and also a swap.

After the install I run the following commands to install grub (bootloader)

Code: 
sudo mount /dev/mmcblk2p2 /mnt
sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts
sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc

sudo chroot /mnt

grub-install /dev/mmcblk2
grub-install --recheck /dev/mmcblk2
update-grub

AND, all of this works and all says successful. The issue here is this process changes my mmcblk2p1 parition into some grub.img and changes the flags. Also changes the drive from fat32 into SOMETHING (unknown file type mount says) that prevents me from mounting it. So I cannot install my bootia32.efi file into the directory. At first I wasn't TOO concerned because, I mean, this should work, right?!

No luck here. My BIOS, which is actually pretty sweet, doesn't see it as a boot option. I only see my bootable usb stick with the livecd on it.

So, lets reinstall again, ubiquity -b. Same options as above WRT the partitions. When done the install I tried to install some grub files I had downloaded before in DEB form. They are the the same ones mentioned above that the install tries to download, except I went and did the leg work for Linux. When running them the BIN has no issues and installs. Perfect. The other file doesnt like the grub-pc program and won't install alongside it. So, I remove it and its one dependancy and run the file again, SUCCESS! BUT, it turns my boot parition into the same grub.img thing as mentioned before.

If I install Linux without a bootloader, it still copies files into the boot directory. Notably the grubx64.efi file. There is no grub.cfg to direct us to it, but it is there along with quote a few *.mod files in child directories. If I reboot after this WITHOUT installing grub and I go into the BIOS I can choose an option called "Create new boot entry". When I select it it gives me the usb stick, which I can browse and I guess change the boot location on, maybe to run multiple Linux boots from the same cd, not sure. Either way, it lists an acpi location with a long winded name, basically saying which hd, wich parition and lists the paritions UUID. If I select this I get a folder structure and as I move down I have an EFI folder and inside there a ubuntu folder and another efi and so on. Picture is the example...

filessssssss.png


In this structure I get a file called grubx64.efi under /EFI/ubuntu/ If I select this file and save and reboot, I basically get no boot device found. So, I got to thinking, why not throw my bootia32.efi into there and select it and see what happens. So I had to reboot with my usb, umount the /mmcblk2p2 and then mount the mmcblk2p1 into /mnt and then copy the file I wanted into there. Then, before I rebooted, I knew I didn't have a grub.cfg file before I never did grub-update to point it there, so what do I do? I make my own and link it to the UUID from before with what I believe are the proper settings (they aren't.

So, I reboot and check the BIOS for my new file and lo and behold, its there and when selected boots me into a grub prompt! Sweet! Although, when directing it to my config file it doesn't do anything but put me back to a grub prompt and I think that it caused by my terribly created grub file. In the end, I had to stop because the battery on my tablet was low. I had been using it for about 10 hours, so it makes sense.

Tomorrow brings another day. And to think, had I found a USB wireless card that worked I would only need to run the install OR would i? Because manually doing it actually solves nothing.
 
I should mention that my grub.cfg file is home made like no ones business, so I bet I am missing SOMETHING in it. I will compare it to the one on my desktop linux install.
 
Me again... For another keeping track on the previous post.. lol

Well, I have some news! I ran

Code: 
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

And it worked. Built me a sexy config. Unfortunately it saved in into my livecd working folder as that's the "system" at the time. Guess how long it took me to figure that out.... I ended up copying it where it needed to be.

When I boot I still get the grub> prompt making me choose the location of my config file each time, but I have sorted out it's hd0,gpt2 location now and I can boot up each time to a functional install. I am ecstatic. You guys have no idea how much effort went into this. I would say a good solid 15 hours, but it's installed and sorta kinda ready to go ;)

Anyone know how to prevent the grub command each time? Googlefu is failing me. Thanks guys!

Also, cpu#2 hangs on every shutdown and I have to manually power it off or spam Ctrl+alt+del until it restarts.

Side issues I'll get to after I get this bugger to show me a grub menu on boot.
 
I didn't fix the grub issue yet and any alias I out in bashrc to use for that long string is never recognized. That said, I moved on and fixed the wifi and audio. I was really hoping this would all be OOB, but oh well. My backspace key works now too, but for the longest time it wouldnt. It definitely didn't during the install and boot loader issues above. If I wanted to remove a mistype I had to select it and press delete lol. Pain in the ass.

As of now I have a booting Ubuntu Mate 17.10 install with audio, video, wifi and usb working. Next on the block? Screen rotation.
 
The grub issue... could paste the output of this command egrep -v "(^#.*|^$)" /etc/default/grub
This will strip comments

egrep -v "(^#.*|^$)" /etc/default/grub
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="Gentoo"
GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=3
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="video=uvesafb:1280x1024-32,mtrr:3,ywrap quiet splash libata.force=6.0 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=noop processor.max_cstate=5 pti=off"
GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x1024
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep
GRUB_THEME="/boot/grub/themes/starfield/theme.txt
Click to expand...
 
heatlesssun said:
Out of curiosity, did you get the pen working? Thanks!
Click to expand...

I don't have a pen! Never did. I have the 64gb black model. The one they stopped selling when they went to 32gb. Maybe they never came in the box on those. Sorry!

naib said:
The grub issue... could paste the output of this command egrep -v "(^#.*|^$)" /etc/default/grub
This will strip comments
Click to expand...

Coming up soon!
 
auntjemima said:
I don't have a pen! Never did. I have the 64gb black model. The one they stopped selling when they went to 32gb. Maybe they never came in the box on those. Sorry!
Click to expand...

I bought a couple of these when they were originally released, I thought that came with the pen at the time, haven't touched them in ages. The pen was pretty crappy and I never used them much anyway, I was just wondering if they worked with your setup. Happy trails!
 
naib said:
The grub issue... could paste the output of this command egrep -v "(^#.*|^$)" /etc/default/grub
This will strip comments
Click to expand...

Code: 
root@james-Venue-8-Pro-5830:~# egrep -v "(^#.*|^$)" /etc/default/grub
GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
GRUB_TERMINAL=console
root@james-Venue-8-Pro-5830:~#
 
mmm ok, prob best to reconfigure grub. Once you have booted your system (with the trick you figured out)...

sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc

and go through hte curses ui to set grubs root
 
hmm, I think I ran that once and didn't really understand what I was doing.. I'll give it a go and see what happens
 
Yeah, it shows me a blank line and says thats ok, then asks me for a new one which I have no idea how to do lol.. or what I should have there.

I'll sudo nano my grub dir and see what the business is between my desktop mint and this mate.
 
I fixed it. Its kinda funny that I messed it up first. after running a boot-repair program is installed 64bit efi files. I really should have expected it. Great program if I had the standard install.

Instead I reinstalled the grub-efi-ia32 and grub-efi-ia32-bin and then ran

Code: 
grub-install --target=i386-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=grub_uefi --recheck

and then remade my config file and BOOM, good to go.
 
heatlesssun

I have been following a website dedicated to installing different different Linux distros to the Venue 8 Pro. This page lists the pen as working and recognized and reads 255 points of pressure. I don't know much about the pen, but thought I should share this.
 
B00nie said:
Great job, but why?
Click to expand...

I know I replied to you already, but this comment really irked me and the more I see it the more I feel the feel to reply again.

In this, a Linux forum, why would anyone ask WHY someone would use that OS? I just don't get it. You regularly complain about Windows and how shitty it is and how Microsoft is some sort of dream smashing giant. I come in here and post about configuring Linux on a device that isn't even designed to run it. I, a mere Windows user, spent the better part of their week (40 hours plus, I would estimate) installing and manually configuring a tablet to run Linux and you answer with Why?

I don't even...
 
auntjemima said:
I know I replied to you already, but this comment really irked me and the more I see it the more I feel the feel to reply again.

In this, a Linux forum, why would anyone ask WHY someone would use that OS? I just don't get it. You regularly complain about Windows and how shitty it is and how Microsoft is some sort of dream smashing giant. I come in here and post about configuring Linux on a device that isn't even designed to run it. I, a mere Windows user, spent the better part of their week (40 hours plus, I would estimate) installing and manually configuring a tablet to run Linux and you answer with Why?

I don't even...
Click to expand...

Well it is a "Windows tablet" so that's automatically going to get some nonsense from him.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
Just to throw out an alternative reaction: I took B00nie's question more as 'what's the utility?' rather than 'why bother?'. I don't believe that he meant to be rude.
Click to expand...

Alright, I'll counter with what's the utility to install it on the desktop? Or a laptop? It's really the same utility. It's a piece of equipment in this world that has been migrated from the death clutch of Microsoft.

This is basically a laptop. It's touch screen, yes, but it comes with a full fledged windows install. Was originally 8.1 and upgraded to 10. Throw a keyboard and mouse and you're on your way.

Edit: if he did, infact, mean it as such then I'll leave it at that. It wasn't really a response I was expecting.
 
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