Tbook 11 UEFI BIOS selection of OS to boot

[John]

I want to install/configure an Android/Lubuntu combination on my Tbook 11 so as to have a responsive portable computing environment that isn’t full of spyware that I can use when traveling. The original Android environment works well enough so that I might leave it alone, but I need to get rid of Windows and install Lubuntu for when I need to use it as a productivity machine.

Following the Linuxium HowTo and using the isorespin.sh script to modify Lubuntu 18.04 LTS, I was able to make that happen the first time without any big problems. WiFi worked out of the box. No touch, but Lubuntu wasn’t designed for touch, so no matter. The original Android install remained in place.

Next, I tried to reinstall Lubuntu after Android was removed and this worked fine too. I even installed LineageOS (CM-x86-14.1-r2), formerly CyanogenMod, from Android-x86.org in a dual boot configuration and this too worked like a champ (though I didn’t spend much time with it, so, for example, I don’t know whether the touch screen works). But this combination seems very promising.

Everything seems perfect … except for one small fly in the ointment: I need to have a USB keyboard connected to the computer to effect an F7 selection method of which OS to boot. This isn’t exactly what I was aiming for. I have the magnetically attached keyboard and keypad designed specifically for the Tbook 11 (which are properly detected and which work properly under Lubuntu 18.04 LTS), but they aren’t seen at boot time, so can’t be used for this purpose. Alas, without the ability to effect an F7 style selection of the OS to boot, the Tbook 11 enters a reboot loop that can’t be exited, and which makes it almost impossible to turn off using the power button. There is a real risk of draining the battery completely.

What I want is a means to select the OS based upon an on screen menu and either a touch (I know this is asking for a lot) or using the volume + / – button. An acceptable fall-back position is for it to boot only into Android if no USB keyboard is available.

The problem seems to be with the UEFI BIOS. (For UEFI purists, I know, that it isn’t a BIOS, but for the rest of us BIOS only means the code that first runs when the computer is turned on). It maintained a boot entry for Windows 10 even after that OS was long ago removed. Likewise it maintained a boot entry for Android even after it had been completely overwritten. I tried removing these entries from within the UEFI BIOS, but they reappear. I then tried using efibootmgr in Lubuntu and was able to remove the Windows entry and make it stick. But, Android still mysteriously comes back after a reboot. I installed refind (which seems to work perfectly), but still need a USB keyboard attached to boot into it using the F7 method. That makes refind’s functionality beside the point.

What seems to be happening is that the boot entries stored in UEFI are backed up somewhere, perhaps in a non-volatile RAM (and hopefully NOT hard-coded), and upon booting, these backup copies automatically replace those stored in UEFI after modifying them using the UEFI BIOS, efibootmgr or refind (and probably any other software). When the UEFI BIOS can’t find the boot files indicated by those boot entries, it generates a momentary flash of an (unreadable) error message and then reboots. The cycle continues forever.

Has anybody else seen this problem? Is there a solution? A work-around (besides carrying around a USB keyboard)? I haven’t been able to find anything on the web.

Thanks for your help.

[Brad]

Installing the rEFInd boot manager might work. It inserts a menu to select the boot OS in a multi-boot configured system. It has a 10 second timer to select the OS then boots the last one selected.  If there is only one choice (only one OS/Linux-distro installed), or the default can be configured, then maybe it will boot what you want with no keyboard input required.

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[John]

Thanks Brad for your post.  Mine was a bit too long probably, but I wanted to be thorough.

If you look closely, I said that I had tried the rEFInd boot manager (though not with the unusual capitalization — that’s why you probably missed it) with no luck.  The issue seems to be that the boot entries are overwritten upon reboot.  So, even with rEFInd installed, the UEFI BIOS never actually runs it, no matter what I do.  The Tbook 11 (and probably most other AndroidIA x86’s) seems to be designed so that you can’t “brick” it by not having a boot entry, i.e., the Android entry.  Of course, that assumes that you have AndroidIA installed.  My guess is that most of these tablets are sold without keyboards so the judgement was made to ensure that you had to try REALLY hard to do so, i.e., by installing a USB keyboard and booting from a USB stick from there.   The problem with this approach is that it seems to prevent someone who wants to do something different from doing so.  🙁

I’m still interested in hearing from someone who has managed to find a way to get past the UEFI BIOS rewriting the boot table upon reboot!   Otherwise, it seems like the only option is to buy a tablet with only Win10 installed on it and try from there.

 

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