GuixSD on a laptop with Heads

GuixSD on a laptop with Heads

[Jonathan Frederickson]

Hey - so I'm trying to get GuixSD running on a Thinkpad X230 running Heads.

(https://github.com/osresearch/heads) For some background: this system boots

into a Linux environment, has scripts that parse the GRUB config, and boots

into the final system using kexec.



The Heads boot scripts do not currently support booting from a system with

full disk encryption, so I'm attempting to boot manually to start (after which

I can patch the scripts to replicate what I did). However, I'm running into

some issues when attempting to boot into the new kernel - the moment I run

kexec, I get no output onscreen from the new kernel:



https://imgur.com/a/r2lFD7k



I've tried adding the usual debug flags to the kernel command line for

troubleshooting (debug, higher LOGLEVEL, earlyprintk to vga) with no change.

I'm not too familiar with the Linux boot process beyond GRUB configuration and

the like, and I'm running out of ideas... does anyone have any pointers on

things I could try next?

Re: GuixSD on a laptop with Heads

[Mark H Weaver]

Hi Jonathan,

"Jonathan Frederickson" <jonathan@terracrypt.net> writes:

> Hey - so I'm trying to get GuixSD running on a Thinkpad X230 running Heads.
> (https://github.com/osresearch/heads) For some background: this system boots
> into a Linux environment, has scripts that parse the GRUB config, and boots
> into the final system using kexec.
>
> The Heads boot scripts do not currently support booting from a system with
> full disk encryption, so I'm attempting to boot manually to start (after which
> I can patch the scripts to replicate what I did). However, I'm running into
> some issues when attempting to boot into the new kernel - the moment I run
> kexec, I get no output onscreen from the new kernel:
>
> https://imgur.com/a/r2lFD7k

I was unable to easily find a way to view this image without running
nonfree Javascript code on my machine.  Can you please send the image in
an attachment?

Also, what was the precise kexec command that you used?

     Thanks,
       Mark

Re: GuixSD on a laptop with Heads

[Mike Gerwitz]

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On Wed, May 01, 2019 at 05:41:26 -0400, Mark H Weaver wrote:
> Hi Jonathan,
>
> "Jonathan Frederickson" <jonathan@terracrypt.net> writes:

[...]

>> https://imgur.com/a/r2lFD7k
>
> I was unable to easily find a way to view this image without running
> nonfree Javascript code on my machine.  Can you please send the image in
> an attachment?

I find that this often works:

  $ wget -qO- https://imgur.com/a/r2lFD7k | grep 'rel="image_src"' | cut -d\" -f4
  https://i.imgur.com/d6Xc2oU.jpg

If you are already in the browser:

   document.querySelector( 'link[rel="image_src"]' ).href

Of course, it's better to encourage people to avoid using it to begin
with. :)

-- 
Mike Gerwitz
Free Software Hacker+Activist | GNU Maintainer & Volunteer
GPG: D6E9 B930 028A 6C38 F43B  2388 FEF6 3574 5E6F 6D05
https://mikegerwitz.com

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Re: GuixSD on a laptop with Heads

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice]

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Jonathan,

I haven't flashed Heads myself, but am passingly familiar with it 
since I do basically the same thing on my hardware including an 
X230 (and intend to recreate that on top of Guix, eventually).

Jonathan Frederickson wrote:
> However, I'm running into some issues when attempting to boot 
> into the new kernel - the moment I run kexec, I get no output 
> onscreen from the new kernel:
>
> https://imgur.com/a/r2lFD7k
>
> I've tried adding the usual debug flags to the kernel command 
> line for troubleshooting (debug, higher LOGLEVEL, earlyprintk to 
> vga) with no change.

That won't help if there's nowhere to print to.  From your 
screenshot, you're not in VGA mode, for example.  Is that 
screenshot from within Heads?  Which graphics driver is Heads 
using at that point?  Have you tried adding the same driver to the 
initrd?

  (initrd-modules (cons* "i915" %base-initrd-modules)))

It's also possible that Heads uses the Coreboot ‘simple’ 
framebuffer, for which you'll have to set at least the following 
kernel options:

  FB_SIMPLE=y
  GOOGLE_FIRMWARE=y
  GOOGLE_COREBOOT_TABLE=y
  GOOGLE_FRAMEBUFFER_COREBOOT=y

[Google isn't even being coy about stealing credit for others' 
work anymore.]

Unfortunately, that requires compiling a custom kernel.

Just some ideas,

T G-R

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Re: GuixSD on a laptop with Heads

[Jonathan Frederickson]

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Ah, apologies for the proprietary Javascript. I was looking for a good
image host since I wasn't sure about the etiquette for attachments on
mailing lists but... whoops.

On 5/1/19 7:19 AM, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice wrote:> That won't help if
there's nowhere to print to.  From your screenshot,
> you're not in VGA mode, for example.  Is that screenshot from within
> Heads?  Which graphics driver is Heads using at that point?  Have you
> tried adding the same driver to the initrd?
> 
>  (initrd-modules (cons* "i915" %base-initrd-modules)))

That did the trick, thank you! I didn't realize the i915 wouldn't be
included out of the box, but in retrospect it makes sense.


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