Feature #7660

Tails 1.1 X60 report

Added by ioerror 2014-07-25 16:28:24 . Updated 2015-01-08 13:40:03 .

Status:
Resolved
Priority:
Normal
Assignee:
Category:
Target version:
Start date:
2014-07-25
Due date:
% Done:

90%

Feature Branch:
Type of work:
End-user documentation
Blueprint:

Starter:
1
Affected tool:
Deliverable for:

Description

I’ve heard that the X60 is not booting for some folks with Tails 1.1 and I wanted to record my upgrade adventure. I did not use the “clone and upgrade” method of installing. I have heard that this doesn’t work for some folks - if that is true - it would be great if they could leave comments on this ticket.

I installed Tails 1.1 from scratch and followed the following instructions:

https://tails.boum.org/doc/first_steps/installation/manual/linux/index.en.html

isohybrid reports the following new message:

cp tails-i386-1.1.iso tails-i386-1.1.iso.hybrid
isohybrid tails-i386-1.1.iso.hybrid --entry 4 --type 0x1c
isohybrid: Warning: more than 1024 cylinders: 1049
isohybrid: Not all BIOSes will be able to boot this device

I installed the iso with dd as expected:

dd if=tails-i386-1.1.iso.hybrid  of=/dev/sdc bs=16M
65+1 records in
65+1 records out
1099956224 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 388.826 s, 2.8 MB/s

This produces a bootable USB disk for an X60 with the IBM BIOS. As a side note - it also boots with the write protect (TrekStor with hardware ro/rw switch, 8GB USB disk) switched enabled on the IBM BIOS.

On an X60 with coreboot, I found a bug in Coreboot/SeaBIOS where the USB disk won’t be detected if the write switch is toggled to read only mode. However I found a work around for the SeaBIOS bug that allows me to boot the disk with the read only switch toggled. Essentially, one must boot with the switch in read/write mode, hit F12 for the SeaBIOS boot menu and before the USB disk is selected, toggle the switch to read only and select it for booting. It will now boot in read only mode. Ironically on a different TrekStore disk (also 8GB) isn’t always needed and sometimes, even with the write protect switch set to read only, it works. Not always but sometimes. It appears to differ based on USB disk which implies that the firmware inside the USB disk is probably different.

There was an annoying bug on the X60 where we’d have to fix the X server’s power management “feature” like so:

xset -dpms s off

That xset fix is no longer required on Tails 1.1 - hooray!

Automatic self-destruct upon USB disk removal works as expected.

Subtasks

History

#1 Updated by intrigeri 2014-07-25 18:15:23

We use Redmine to keep track of what we should do. After reading this (very interesting!) report, it’s unclear to me what action you’re expecting. Is it about documenting the workaround needed to boot a X60 with coreboot off a write-protected USB stick?

#2 Updated by olabini 2014-07-25 21:05:07

Hi,

I’m having trouble with running Tails 1.1 on my X60. These are the facts:

The X60 is running SeaBIOS.

I had three working USB sticks (16gbs) with 1.0.1 - 20140608, all of them copies of each other with persistent storage. I used one of them to do an upgrade of the other two. The upgrade was done by downloading the iso over torrent, verifying the signature and putting it on a transfer USB stick. I then ran the Tails Installer to upgrade the two other sticks.

Both of the secondary sticks fail to boot in different ways.
stick model: hp v210w 16gb
this is the output I get:
ifcpu64.c32: not a COM32R image
boot:

the third stick is: PNY USB 2.0 FD 16gb
That one only gives me “No bootable device”

I haven’t tried creating a new stick from scratch yet.

#3 Updated by ioerror 2014-07-25 21:48:46

intrigeri wrote:
> We use Redmine to keep track of what we should do. After reading this (very interesting!) report, it’s unclear to me what action you’re expecting. Is it about documenting the workaround needed to boot a X60 with coreboot off a write-protected USB stick?

I’m hoping to have various X60 users report their experiences - which will include some errors like the most recent response above and also to document weird work around issues too.

#4 Updated by BitingBird 2014-07-25 22:06:48

olabini: you have to follow the instructions on https://tails.boum.org/news/version_1.1/

#5 Updated by olabini 2014-07-25 22:40:47

Ugh. Didn’t even see that. Sorry.

However, how do I do this for the segretated Tails-instances that only run on an airgapped machine?

#6 Updated by sajolida 2014-07-28 17:59:30

redmine@labs.riseup.net wrote:
> Issue Feature #7660 has been updated by olabini.
>
> Ugh. Didn’t even see that. Sorry.
>
> However, how do I do this for the segretated Tails-instances that only run on an airgapped machine?

You first get Tails 1.1 installed on some machine through this
technique, and then you use “Clone and Upgrade” from 1.1 to 1.1.

Otherwise you can maybe use a DVD…

#7 Updated by intrigeri 2015-01-08 13:40:03

  • Status changed from In Progress to Resolved
  • Assignee deleted (ioerror)

Closing after discussing this with ioerror: dear modified X60 users (X60 is modified, not the user, presumably), if you experience issues with Tails on your hardware, please report specific bugs :)