Trying to setup Pop OS on Surface Pro

[hello_world98]

I just downloaded pop os on my surface pro since ive been using it and enjoying it very much on my desktop, but I noticed that many of the surface features dont work without a custom kernel, so I installed the one by jakeday here but the touchscreen etc still dont work. Help?

[Sauron]

If all you did was installing the modified kernel you're still not done - you need to actually tell Pop_OS to use it. At a minimum this means you need to add a bootloader entry. Are you using GRUB or systemd-boot?

[hello_world98]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

If all you did was installing the modified kernel you're still not done - you need to actually tell Pop_OS to use it. At a minimum this means you need to add a bootloader entry. Are you using GRUB or systemd-boot?

that i am not sure, is that the default one?

[Sauron]

1 minute ago, hello_world98 said:

that i am not sure, is that the default one?

You can find out with

bootctl status

if it complains or doesn't show any entries you're probably using grub, if it shows your boot configuration you're using systemd-boot

[hello_world98]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

You can find out with

bootctl status

if it complains or doesn't show any entries you're probably using grub, if it shows your boot configuration you're using systemd-boot

System:
     Firmware: UEFI 2.60 (MSFT 1.00)
  Secure Boot: disabled
   Setup Mode: setup

Current Boot Loader:
      Product: systemd-boot 240
     Features: ✓ Boot counting
               ✓ Menu timeout control
               ✓ One-shot menu timeout control
               ✓ Default entry control
               ✓ One-shot entry control
          ESP: /dev/disk/by-partuuid/3c11db65-034b-4ea9-a9ef-294c8bcb226f
         File: └─/EFI/systemd/systemd-bootx64.efi

Boot Loaders Listed in EFI Variables:
        Title: Pop!_OS 19.04
           ID: 0x0005
       Status: active, boot-order
    Partition: /dev/disk/by-partuuid/3c11db65-034b-4ea9-a9ef-294c8bcb226f
         File: └─/EFI/systemd/systemd-bootx64.efi

        Title: Windows Boot Manager
 

 

 

This is what it spat out. seems im using systemd-boot

[Sauron]

1 minute ago, hello_world98 said:

This is what it spat out. seems im using systemd-boot

Yep

 

You can add a boot entry following this page

[hello_world98]

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Yep

 

You can add a boot entry following this page

Where do I find the image i downloaded? And i dont fully understand what is going on in that article to be honest. Sorry Im still fairly new to linux so this is all still new to me. Funny how this wasnt included at all in the instructions for getting it set up

[Sauron]

19 minutes ago, hello_world98 said:

i dont fully understand what is going on in that article to be honest

I don't blame you, systemd-boot is a bit of a pain compared to grub.

 

I'll try to walk you through it, can you post the contents of the .conf file in /etc/loader/entries/ so I have a reference for your system?

 

(btw I'm going out in a minute so I won't answer for a bit)

[hello_world98]

7 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I don't blame you, systemd-boot is a bit of a pain compared to grub.

 

I'll try to walk you through it, can you post the contents of the .conf file in /etc/loader/entries/ so I have a reference for your system?

 

(btw I'm going out in a minute so I won't answer for a bit)

joshuariedel@pop-os:~$ /etc/loader
bash: /etc/loader: No such file or directory

I dont have a loader subfolder

[Sauron]

4 hours ago, hello_world98 said:

joshuariedel@pop-os:~$ /etc/loader
bash: /etc/loader: No such file or directory

I dont have a loader subfolder

I'm sorry, I was in a hurry and I misread the page. The wiki says esp/loader/entries, not etc. ESP is the Efi system partition mount point, usually /boot.

 

So the correct path is probably

/boot/loader/entries/

 

[hello_world98]

32 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I'm sorry, I was in a hurry and I misread the page. The wiki says esp/loader/entries, not etc. ESP is the Efi system partition mount point, usually /boot.

 

So the correct path is probably

/boot/loader/entries/

 

joshuariedel@surface-pro:~$ /boot/loader
bash: /boot/loader: No such file or directory

Still not there

[Sauron]

10 minutes ago, hello_world98 said:

joshuariedel@surface-pro:~$ /boot/loader
bash: /boot/loader: No such file or directory

Still not there

might be /boot/efi then... unfortunately I'm kind of running blind here, I don't know where the developers of pop_os decided to mount their efi boot partition. Maybe you can ask on r/pop_os, I'm sure people there have more distro specific knowledge than I do.

Otherwise you could just try with Ubuntu, it uses grub by default iirc.

[hello_world98]

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

might be /boot/efi then... unfortunately I'm kind of running blind here, I don't know where the developers of pop_os decided to mount their efi boot partition. Maybe you can ask on r/pop_os, I'm sure people there have more distro specific knowledge than I do.

Otherwise you could just try with Ubuntu, it uses grub by default iirc.

 

This is what I found at that directory, below is what was stored in pop_os-current:

 

title Pop!_OS
linux /EFI/Pop_OS-94516b6e-4f5b-415b-a1ff-2bc78b82f3e7/vmlinuz.efi
initrd /EFI/Pop_OS-94516b6e-4f5b-415b-a1ff-2bc78b82f3e7/initrd.img
options root=UUID=94516b6e-4f5b-415b-a1ff-2bc78b82f3e7 ro quiet loglevel=0 systemd.show_status=false splash

[Sauron]

53 minutes ago, hello_world98 said:

 

This is what I found at that directory, below is what was stored in pop_os-current:

 

title Pop!_OS
linux /EFI/Pop_OS-94516b6e-4f5b-415b-a1ff-2bc78b82f3e7/vmlinuz.efi
initrd /EFI/Pop_OS-94516b6e-4f5b-415b-a1ff-2bc78b82f3e7/initrd.img
options root=UUID=94516b6e-4f5b-415b-a1ff-2bc78b82f3e7 ro quiet loglevel=0 systemd.show_status=false splash

ok, can you show me the contents of /boot and /boot/efi?

[hello_world98]

33 minutes ago, Sauron said:

ok, can you show me the contents of /boot and /boot/efi?

 

[Sauron]

Ok, just one more thing - what's in /boot/efi/EFI and in /boot/efi/EFI/Pop_OS-94516b6e-4f5b-415b-a1ff-2bc78b82f3e7 ?

[hello_world98]

3 hours ago, Sauron said:

Ok, just one more thing - what's in /boot/efi/EFI and in /boot/efi/EFI/Pop_OS-94516b6e-4f5b-415b-a1ff-2bc78b82f3e7 ?

 

[Sauron]

Ok, I think you need to make a file called surface.conf (you can call it whatever you like as long as it ends with .conf) in /boot/efi/loader/entries with the following content:

title surface
linux ../vmlinuz-5.0.9-surface-linux-surface
initrd ../initrd.img-5.0.9-surface-linux-surface
options root=UUID=94516b6e-4f5b-415b-a1ff-2bc78b82f3e7 ro quiet loglevel=0 systemd.show_status=false splash

upon rebooting you should see a "surface" boot option, select that and hope

[hello_world98]

6 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Ok, I think you need to make a file called surface.conf (you can call it whatever you like as long as it ends with .conf) in /boot/efi/loader/entries with the following content:

title surface
linux ../vmlinuz-5.0.9-surface-linux-surface
initrd ../initrd.img-5.0.9-surface-linux-surface
options root=UUID=94516b6e-4f5b-415b-a1ff-2bc78b82f3e7 ro quiet loglevel=0 systemd.show_status=false splash

upon rebooting you should see a "surface" boot option, select that and hope

Nothing happened on reboot but i went back to that directory and this is it

[Sauron]

8 minutes ago, hello_world98 said:

Nothing happened on reboot but i went back to that directory and this is it

Then I'm not sure how to proceed, you should ask on a more Linux centric forum, I'm sure there will be people there who can help you. For instance you could try:

forum.level1techs.com

reddit (r/linux, r/linuxquestions or r/pop_os)

linuxquestions.org

[hello_world98]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Then I'm not sure how to proceed, you should ask on a more Linux centric forum, I'm sure there will be people there who can help you. For instance you could try:

forum.level1techs.com

reddit (r/linux, r/linuxquestions or r/pop_os)

linuxquestions.org

Update: I changed the default kernel to boot from in Grub2 and that didnt do anything either. No other ideas? I thought the kernel would work because pop os is Ubuntu based

[Sauron]

18 minutes ago, hello_world98 said:

Update: I changed the default kernel to boot from in Grub2 and that didnt do anything either. No other ideas? I thought the kernel would work because pop os is Ubuntu based

Are you sure you're actually booted with the new kernel? uname -a should tell you for sure.

If you are and it doesn't do what you expect I have no idea what the problem could be, you should ask the developer. Maybe you should try it with Ubuntu just to see if the steps you followed are correct and if it is a problem with pop_os specifically.

[hello_world98]

11 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Are you sure you're actually booted with the new kernel? uname -a should tell you for sure.

If you are and it doesn't do what you expect I have no idea what the problem could be, you should ask the developer. Maybe you should try it with Ubuntu just to see if the steps you followed are correct and if it is a problem with pop_os specifically.

 

I think this means that it is not booting from my kernel

[Sauron]

15 minutes ago, hello_world98 said:

 

I think this means that it is not booting from my kernel

Yep, the custom kernel should be 5.0.9 right?

[hello_world98]

1 minute ago, Sauron said:

Yep, the custom kernel should be 5.0.9 right?

Yes, how do i change this?

 

I downloaded the grub customizer and this is what i see

 

 

 

according to that, unless i understand wrong, it should be the default