Running Linux on the EZBook 2?

[Ricardo Simões]

PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE YOUR BIOS SETTINGS!!!!

You will BRICK your EzBook!!!! Read my previous post to know more

Best regards
Ricardo

[Peter Willig]

Thank you for your answer @xmcorporation! I have read the entire thread and also your posts about your broken Notebook. Really sad to hear it can be broken by changing the bios settings! So i guess you haven’t got it working again after that? Have you tried to flash the bios on another pc?

I do not change many settings in the BIOS and to be honest i asked to be sure which setting has to be changed so that i don’t change the wrong or have to try ALL settings and break mine too!

Maybe @jreith reads this and comes back to give this information.

[Ricardo Simões]

It doesn’t matter which settings… anyone of them can brick it, it’s just the way these crappy BIOS are built (there are many other threads on this forum with users with similar devices with the same problem).

I did not flash the BIOS because it implies spending more money on this crap which I will not, I’ve learn my lesson, next laptop that I’ll buy has to be Linux supported out-of-the-box.

Best of luck to you and all others with this, and I really hope someday all its hardware will function properly on Linux but until then I’ll use it as paperweight.

Best regards
Ricardo

[Janus Reith]

Ricardo, Im sorry for the issues you had, but dont spread this kind of wrong information and make everyone panic. BTW I also gave you explanations on how to fix your bios again, it doesn’t involve much time or money…

@Peter Willig, you changed the right setting as far as I remember, maybe look if it’s listed under /sys/bus/acpi/devices

Im taking short break on this since i destroyed my display, Im still awaiting my replacement screen to swap it out. Should arrive end of the month…

[Ricardo Simões]

Janus Reith wrote:

Ricardo, Im sorry for the issues you had, but dont spread this kind of wrong information and make everyone panic. BTW I also gave you explanations on how to fix your bios again, it doesn’t involve much time or money…

I’m sorry but I don’t know what a “A suitable usb to spi flasher” is, and also did not find any BIOS file in this forum for this particular model of Jumper EzBook 2

Best regards
Ricardo

[Peter Willig]

Thank you for your reply.

@xmcorporation you can find information on this forum as jreith has mentioned. for example look here: https://techtablets.com/forum/topic/bios-cmos-reset/
i have not read it until the end, be careful with the advices but i think it should be possible to repair the bios on the cheap.

@jreith okay this setting mentioned above in bios did not change the appearance in /sys/bus/sdio/devices.
under /sys/bus/acpi/devices there are several devices listed but i can not figure out which is the right one. i am reading and reading through all the “Issues” Thread on the https://github.com/hadess/rtl8723bs/issues git page to learn more about the hardware and how linux works with it. although i use linux for more than 10 years i am new to the building of kernel and applying patches and so on.

I tried Antergos with Kernel 4.8 but touchpad, LED brightness control etc don’t work when i boot into the live system.

• do i have to install it to the internal drive to have this working?
• for the wifi, did you compile your kernel and apply patches from githup page before that?

Could you be so kind and give some basic instructions for noobs? 🙂

[Janus Reith]

Today I recieved and replaced the screen (Chimei Innolux n133hse-*), my Yepo 737s works again.

Appareantly it seems like the Ezbook 2 has a different touchpad than the Yepo 737s. For me it also worked in the Antergos Live USB.

The wifi only works halfways: it is detected now, i can turn it on and off, but it doesn’t find any Networks. Therefore I’m also keeping a look at https://github.com/hadess/rtl8723bs.
Yes i compiled my own kernel, but I used the patches from https://github.com/ferbar/rtl8723bs/tree/master/patches_4.7, as the current arch kernel is 4.8 and things appareantly changed since the 4.5 kernel.

Bluetooth also works now, you just have to clone https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8723bs_bt and execute start_bt.sh on each boot(or auto start it, but still a bit dirty imho).

Sadly i didn’t get any further with sound yet, as it is hard to find any information, I tried it with search terms like “Intel Cherrytrail audio linux”, same with baytrail, “ES8316” but accurate information is rare. I tried to rebuild my kernel with several cherrytrail related patches, but they had no additional visible effect for me. Also i found it hard to keep track which patches relate to which kernel, and which patches would make other patches obsolete, etc…

For the touchpad, maybe it could help to play with the settings in Bios -> Advanced -> Chipset Configuration, for example “I2C Touch Devics”.

What i dont know is, if these settings just tell the mainboard which hardware device is actually connected, or if it changes the way the bios exposes the devices to the operating system.

[Janus Reith]

Peter Willig wrote:

@jreith okay this setting mentioned above in bios did not change the appearance in /sys/bus/sdio/devices. under /sys/bus/acpi/devices there are several devices listed but i can not figure out which is the right one.

ls /sys/bus/sdio/devices/ returns just one entry mmc2:0001:1 for me.
ls /sys/bus/sdio/drivers/ just shows a folder rtrtl8723bs, and in there is a symlink to /sys/bus/sdio/devices/mmc2:0001:1.

In /sys/bus/acpi/devices there are several entrys starting with 80860F14: that are related to wifi.

Those things are the same, wether I use my patched kernel or the standard 4.8 kernel.

However if I change SDIO back from pci to acpi, /sys/bus/sdio/drivers/ is empty like expected.

[Robert]

In latest version Ubuntu 17.04 pseudo Alpha 2 from Linuxium: http://linuxiumcomau.blogspot.com/2017/01/bleeding-edge-ubuntu-4100-57-kernel.html work wifi out of the box. Sound and touchpad still not work.

[Ricardo Simões]

Robert wrote:

In latest version Ubuntu 17.04 pseudo Alpha 2 from Linuxium: http://linuxiumcomau.blogspot.com/2017/01/bleeding-edge-ubuntu-4100-57-kernel.html work wifi out of the box. Sound and touchpad still not work.

Just to confirm, wi-fi works out of the box without the need to change anything in BIOS?

Also could you paste here the result of terminal command inxi -xxAv6 please.

Best regards
Ricardo

[Alsetema]

I will check this tomorrow.

I own a Yepo 737s and I am wishing for linux to work on it.

I’ll report tomorrow if I can.

[Alsetema]

Regarding Ubuntu 17.04 pseudo Alpha 2 from Linuxium,

I flashed it onto a USB and checked that it boots properly from my desktop PC, so I proceeded to try it on the Yepo.

I pressed Esc when booting and so on to select where it wants to boot. Then I selected Try Ubuntu from the Grub menu, it seemed to load properly, and after the Ubuntu loading logo had gone, the screen was on, but nothing appeared on it, just plain black. I waited for half an hour to see if it was just loading, but nothing.

After this, I rebooted (by holding the power button since ctrl + alt + del did nothing and neither did alt + sys rq +b) and this time I chose the Install Ubuntu option instead.

What happened is that it still didnt work, the Ubuntu load screen appears, but suddently the screen turns off. I could confirm the lapblet was still on since it had the little blue light on its right on, but same thing, it didn’t respond to any key combo, so I decided to turn it off.

So far no success.

[Janus Reith]

Alsetema wrote:

, just plain black. I waited for half an hour to see if it was just loading, but nothing. After this, I rebooted (by holding the power button since ctrl + alt + del did nothing and neither did alt + sys rq +b) and this time I chose the Install Ubuntu option instead. What happened is that it still didnt work, the Ubuntu load screen appears, but suddently the screen turns off. I could confirm the lapblet was still on since it had the little blue light on its right on, but same thing, it didn’t respond to any key combo, so I decided to turn it off.

I just tried it, with the right bios settings it booted without issues. A soundcard showed up, but no sound output. wifi was there, but didn’t find networks. Bluetooth appareantly worked. Touchpad and Hotkeys also worked.

Now i changed my bios back to defaults, and the issue you described occurs.
So i have to find out which bios setting it was that made it work, I had several settings set to pci instead of acpi.

 

[Alsetema]

It doesn’t seem like it’s too hard to fix!

I’m glad you realised what it is, probably it has something to do with the screen settings, check for those.

I await reply

Alsetema.

[Janus Reith]

Alsetema wrote:

It doesn’t seem like it’s too hard to fix! I’m glad you realised what it is, probably it has something to do with the screen settings, check for those. I await reply Alsetema.

 

Nope, not screen settings, I got it to work again narrowed it down to one of these 4 options that I changed from acpi to pci again:

In Advanced -> Chipset :

•  ̶A̶u̶d̶i̶o̶ ̶-̶>̶ ̶L̶P̶E̶ ̶A̶u̶d̶i̶o̶ ̶S̶u̶p̶p̶o̶r̶t̶  (Also works without setting this to PCI, and Sound Device is still shown)
•  ̶S̶C̶C̶ ̶-̶ ̶>̶ ̶S̶C̶C̶ ̶e̶M̶M̶C̶  (Also without that)
• SCC – > SCC SDIO <– Appareantly this is the reason, just like for the wifi. Screen stays black if this is set to acpi.
• S̶C̶C̶ ̶-̶ ̶>̶ ̶S̶C̶C̶ ̶S̶D̶ (Also check this just to be sure, also doesn’t matter)

So at least one of them seems to do the trick

 

 

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