X won't start in new Laptop (Intel Iris XE integrated grapics) Kirkstone64 5.7

[vtpup]

I just received a gift laptop, it's a new HP Envy 17" 17t-cr100 (8be7 Motherboard) with integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics and 1920 x 1080 display.

On it I can presently run Fossapup F96-CE from a thumbdrive. That starts well in the OOTB condition, except for touchpad and Intel wifi6 AX211 card. These two issues were solved by changing to the "huge-6.1.8-fossapup64" kernel from here: https://archive.org/download/Puppy_Linux_Huge-Kernels .

I now have a thumbdrive EasyOS Kirkstone64 (version 5.7) that I created on my old laptop, and have brought over to this new one. It worked well on the old computer

It starts up properly on the new one through the password stage, but halts at the start of X without opening the desktop. Several choices are given in Xorgwizard, including VESA and a few resolutions, but all choices fail to start X after typing "xwin".

I did look up how to change kernels on EasyOS, but that thread mentions there will be problems because of special security features built in. viewtopic.php?t=5768

I think the Iris Xe integrated graphics is an Intel standard type now for laptops so it would be generally helpful if I could get Kirkstone64 working on this one, but I'm not sure how to. Help would be appreciated.

[Federico]

This sounds really strange. I also have an Iris Xe laptop (Tiger Lake) on which I've been running Easy 3 years long now without any sort of problem (Dunfell first and Kirkstone later).
Did you disable secure boot? Which video chip was using the old laptop? Please make sure that secure boot is disabled and choose the Intel driver within the Xorg configuration utility.
The Intel i915 kernel module should be automatically used.
Also the USB-legacy option (USB Mass Storage Driver Support)
should obviously be activated.

More over, make sure not to use any USB-hub and any USB-cable extension. Connect the stick directly and
only use USB ports which can provide enough current for reading and writing from and to the USB stick fast enough (usually one port is marked with a lightning symbol, that port can be used to charge the battery of external devices and that port should be used).

If you still aren't successfull the issue could be due to other hardware on the new PC. Then please provide more info.

Anyway, the BIOS of the new laptop may be buggy, which fact is unfortunately not uncommon.
What I'd do if I was you is to update the BIOS first from within Windows (or through whatever needed procedure) and afterwards try again.

[vtpup]

Thanks for replying Frederico -- for some reason I didn't get a notification of your reply, so I'm sorry about the day delay in answering.

Yes, secure boot is disabled and in fact I'm writing this on the same laptop running F-96 CE ver 4, from USB stick, which I've been using for almost a week.

There is no USB hub or cable, just direct normal thumbdrive plug in. The same type and brand thumbdrive I can run F96 CE from.

I can boot F96 from any port on this laptop. Yup, there are a wealth of great ports, including two USB-C, the rest are all USB-A and all are both 2.x and 3.x capable. Plenty of current -- I've already run a portable DVD writer and a portable HDD off of these ports as the sole power supply.

I've also just tried Bookwormpup64 and it boots fine from thumbdrive. Using its sysinfo for display I get:

▶—— Video Summary ——◀

Display Specifications
• Screen Name eDP-1
• Screen VertRefresh 60.02 times/s
• Screen Resolution 1920x1080 pixels (508x285 millimeters)
• Screen Depth 24 bits (planes)

Xorg Startup Log (/var/log/Xorg.0.log)
• Xorg Driver in use modesetting
• Loaded Modules dbe evdev fb fbdevhw glamoregl glx libinput synaptics
• X.Org version 1.21.1.7

OpenGL 2D/3D Rendering
• Direct Rendering Yes
• Vendor Intel
• Renderer Mesa Intel(R) Graphics (RPL-P)
• Version 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 22.3.6

VGA device [0300] Intel Corporation Raptor Lake-P [Iris Xe Graphics] [8086:a7a0] (rev 04)
• Kernel Driver i915
• Memory Used by Driver 2980.00 KB
• Path /lib/modules/6.1.67/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915.ko
• Description Intel Graphics
• Video RAM 15694M total, 256M prefetchable

Finally, I'm going to try the dumb user test right now and assume that the instance of EasyOS I tried might be bad (or changed, due to having run it on my old laptop first).

I'll install it on a new stick, from a fresh download. Results in a bit.........

[bigpup]

If the Easy USB has a save on it from the other computer operation.

Try booting not using the save.

[vtpup]

Hi bigpup, thanks, I went further and re-downloaded, checked, and reinstalled on a new thumbdrive. No save, totally fresh.

Nope. No change: totally fresh install on different thumbdrive does not start X on this new laptop. And as a confirmation that the install works elsewhere, I tried it on my old laptop (in sig below) and it boots up nicely into EasyOS.

So, back to square one. Kernel, modules or firmware are not initiated sufficient for this very new laptop's graphics in EasyOS OOTB.

Happy to test suggestions.

[bigpup]

You already know you need to be using a 6 series kernel for the hardware in this computer.

I do wonder why Vesa driver would not work.

The kernel config for the kernel could be missing some needed setting.

Configuring a kernel is a black art.
It is very easy to not config something correctly.

But with this being very very new hardware.

A 5 series kernel is most likely just not going to have what is needed to support the hardware.

[vtpup]

Just out of curiosity, Bigpup, I just tried stick installs of the old 5.x kernel crowd: Bionic64, Fossa64 9.5, and they both failed much earlier in the boot process (the errors I saw were that they couldn't find the UUID partition of the stick).

EasyOS Kirkstone64 didn't have that problem and nearly booted to the desktop. It's xserver fatal error was that it couldn't find "screens".

I did the above because I wasn't absolutely sure the laptop couldn't boot a 5,x kernel and was curious. This laptop needed a kernel upgrade even on F96-CE to 6.1.8 huge, but not for X reasons. It needed the upgrade to get some other things to work (touchpad, Intel AX211 wifi, sound)

It may well be that a 6.x kernel is needed in EasyOS for this laptop. I don't know that for sure.

Unfortunately doing a kernel swap in EasyOS to say 6.1.8 or higher is not advisable for security reasons. It was easy in F96-CE, though. And Bookworm pup 64 has a higher kernel even than that OOTB.

I do think a recent 6 kernel might allow EasyOS to boot here.

[Caramel]

Unfortunately doing a kernel swap in EasyOS to say 6.1.8 or higher is not advisable for security reasons. It was easy in F96-CE, though. And Bookworm pup 64 has a higher kernel even than that OOTB.

I do think a recent 6 kernel might allow EasyOS to boot here.

You can test with easyvoid with kernel 6.6.16.

You can also compil a kernel 6.6 or 6.8 with the sources adapted to Easy (sources and instructions : https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/source/kernel/)

Easier but not guaranteed, test Easy 5.7 with the kernel (and modules) from easyvoid

[vtpup]

Sounds good, thanks Caramel. I'll try it.

[vtpup]

Yes, EasyVoid 240308 worked!

EasyVoidscreenshot.jpg (51 KiB) Viewed 546 times

What worked OOTB: Xwindows, Touchpad

What worked partially: Sound (headphone only), Bluetooth (scanned and identified properly but couldn't pair headphones)

What did not work: Speaker sound, Wifi (card not found)

It's interesting that bluetooth worked partially, since it is part of the wifi card (Intel AX211) while the wifi portion was unrecognized as a device.

I realize that EasyVoid is in Alpha, and I also think I read that wifi doesn't work in general, yet.

[vtpup]

Easier but not guaranteed, test Easy 5.7 with the kernel (and modules) from easyvoid

I thought I'd give this a try, but ran into amateur problems. First try was using my present F96-CE installation to mount the EasyOS .img file using williwaw' mount-img script. But though it mounted both EasyOS and EasyVoid, I couldn't transfer the vmlinuz over because it was a "read only filesystem".

Then I tried booting into EasyVoid, and then mounting a thumbdrive (sdb) with EasyOS on it. I was then able to transfer vmlinuz over. I didn't see any of the usual fdrv etc. sfs files from puppies. So just tried it with the new kernel, expecting it wouldn't work. And it didn't.

I tried it again copying initrd over, made a symlink between easyos and easyvoid folders, but then it complained it couldn't find easy in Releases.

I gave up then. I don't properly know which additional support files are necessary to transfer from EasyVoid besides the kernel and how to get all the links straightened out to allow it to finish booting. I'm sure it's doable to Frankenstein it -- I just don't know all the steps necessary for these non-puppies.

[Caramel]

Then I tried booting into EasyVoid, and then mounting a thumbdrive (sdb) with EasyOS on it. I was then able to transfer vmlinuz over. I didn't see any of the usual fdrv etc. sfs files from puppies. So just tried it with the new kernel, expecting it wouldn't work. And it didn't.

You need to add the modules in /lib/modules/6.6.16

You can extract them from linux_kernel-6.6.16-20240212-void64.pet (available page https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64 ... ages-void/) with for example pet2dir in EasyOS