Acer Swift 14 Go appears not to boot

[Cpt-Dingus]

Hi, I'm glad to see this device being worked on! I've downloaded and attempted to run the image linked here, have finally gotten the image to boot! However, the image does not install, appears to hang on Configuring keyboard... with the logs not existing because of tail: can't open /var/log/installer/debugand tail: can't open /var/log/syslog because neither exist.

I also want to point out that my first boot took a few minutes to get to the installer screen, the second it got to it the device went back to the kernel which just said Terminated. without any errors. On my second boot it went through the installer near instantly.

[Cpt-Dingus]

Just porting the update from the ubuntu discussion thread, it booted fine upon a reflash! Seems to work fine for the most part, can do more testing when I am able to move the install to my NVME.

[jglathe]

Now that it is running (it's not really an installer, its pre-installed desktop like on a Raspberry Pi), let's see if you can get it onto the nvme.

Run it on the nvme: You need some courage, and maybe a recovery stick if it goes south (no idea what Acer has to offer in this regard). Make sure you have a backup of all your data on this laptop.

• 1TB drive: shrink Windows root partition to half (that's what I do normally). Gives you ~500GB space for Linux.
• have the linux boot image itself available either as a second stick or on the stick itself (needs to be 32GB at least for that, needs to be decompressed as .img)
• boot from the stick
• install dosfstools mtools
• run gparted, add the root partition for your new system, give a distinct label (NOT the same as on the stick), format it the way you prefer (ext4 is default and works well, I have one box with btrfs, works too. Mount scripts and fstab differ, though. I paid attention that the usual filesystems are built-in in the kernel).
• mount the new partition directly (assuming it is /dev/nvme0n1p5, ESP is /dev/nvme0n1p1)
  sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p5 /mnt/
• mount the linux boot image (simply with the disks tool, your path should be /media/<your username>/root2410
• rsync the whole freaking rootfs over to the new partition
  sudo rsync -avE /media/<your username>/root2410/ /mnt/

Now comes the more complicated part. We have the rootfs installed (which will do its "fetch firmware / reboot / set up user" dance when used), but we need to:

• install the grub bootloader to the nvme
• make a boot entry for this system
• move over to boot from the nvme without destroying anything.

To achieve this we need to do this in several reboot steps:

1. Prepare to boot from the stick, but with the rootfs on the nvme
2. Rewire for nvme boot
3. Boot from nvme

1. Prepare to boot from the stick, but with the rootfs on the nvme

For this we need to edit /mnt/etc/fstab for the first boot.

sudo nano /mnt/etc/fstab

Actually, this is two changes - we define the local nvme EFI partition to be mounted on /boot/efi/, and our new root filesystem on /. This will also be the final config for the new system.

To make a boot entry for this system, we use update-grub. We need to amend the generated file for booting with a device tree, though.:

# add boot entries from other partitions
sudo update-grub

# edit the boot entry after generating - unfortunaly necessary due to missing functionality (don't want to say bug) in grub
nano /boot/grub/grub.cfg

# add the the device-tree  /boot/dtb line to the newly created entry pointing to /dev/nvme0n1. You can copy the line from the first entry and add it to all Linux entries you can find where it is missing (should be 2)

	devicetree	/boot/dtb-6.15.0-rc1-jg-3-qcom-x1e

After that, we can reboot from stick, with the newly created boot entry from nvme0n1. It should come up (after its setup dance with one reboot).

2. Rewire for nvme boot

We're running now on the rootfs that is already on the nvme. We have already mounted the EFI partition on the nvme, too. The remaining steps are to install grub-efi and update grub again.

# install grub - this adds the uefi boot entry, too. 
sudo grub-install

#normally we should be able to remove the USB stick we booted from - makes for a cleaner grub boot menu
sudo update-grub

Now it should be possible to reboot from nvme, and dual-boot

3. Boot from nvme

The reboot without the USB stick should bring up grub and boot the system from nvme, or Windows, depending on what you choose. If it just boots windows (not unusual, unfortunately) then we need to change the boot order in the UEFI BIOS to have Ubuntu first.

[Cpt-Dingus]

The issue is that grub doesn't seemingly even show up at all, how would linux options affect it? I can't even get the selection screen to pop up.

[Cpt-Dingus]

I can confirm it exists in the boot entries after running the commands. What is happening here?

[jglathe]

Well then its "delete all boot entries" in uefi BIOS, select only the disk. Or, if you know which one works, leave that as the only one available. I have no real idea what the EFI boot tries, bot there are off things, depending on device.

[Cpt-Dingus]

Tried. Deleted everything except for wbm with efibootmgr, deleted ubuntu from /boot/efi/EFI, reran commands, no help

Can we maybe get in touch via matrix? A real time comm might be beneficial.

[jglathe]

go ahead

[jglathe]

Update to add: It works, but boy is the Acer UEFI firmware "special"... It appears to be able to only boot the first UEFI boot entry reliably. This must be grub , grub can boot Windows and Ubuntu.
The procedure described may work. Pay attentieon to the filesystem UUIDs, need to be different, grub OS-prober seems to be keen on interchanging them.

[lakatdev]

I installed this said image to an empty nvme disk by burning it there and later manually partitioning it for windows too (https://gist.github.com/caccialdo/3b0d0113489ecee456d94c1e9462d755) and copying windows files from the Windows 11 ARM ISO. Booted windows and installed the firmwares and drivers using windows update and just after that booted the Ubuntu image for the first time. It worked!

Now the main issue i have is the CPU fan not working at all and the laptop shutting down from throttling after continuous use. Not sure what to do with that yet.

[jglathe]

Actually, congratulations. 🚀 That fan issue will be sort of stay with us until we either can load the appropriate EC driver, or get more than rudimentary SoC support for x126* / x1p4* Purwa chips. This is actually an issue with this model, The Thinkbook 16 has very potent fans, also active on Linux. I know of this kind of behaviour from the Vivobook S15, apparently Acer, I thought I also heard it from the Yoga Slim 7. HP Omnibook has dynamic fans, too, but can also emergency switch off if the airflow isn't enough. Maybe there is a BIOS setting to change that behaviour... actually never looked.
What's the issue with the Purwa SoC: It is a scaled-down variant of Hamoa (x1e80100). They are drop-in pin compatible (apparently) , but the device trees are not the same. x1p42100.dtsi is derived from x1e80100.dtsi. Because there is a smaller GPU and fewer cores, it is also one tsens sensor bank less. The assignment (and interrupt routing of these), is probably different - that info is missing. The SoC has some internal firmware thermal management, so it will switch off before frying the chip. But maybe a delve into the firmware device trees can be useful for this assignment, come to think of it.
There's also good news: X1 has appeared as chip-id for Chromebooks. So we might benefit from their implementations, eventually.