HCL - Lenovo Z50-75 (AMD A10-7300)

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GD

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Nov 11, 2015, 5:47:37 AM11/11/15
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Bought this machine from Lenovo to check the AMD side of things. 
For £315 it was cheap enough. (15" Full HD screen, 8 gigs of ram, 1TB hdd needs switching to ssd for the vm-s)
Turned out it dosnt have TPM and IOMMU donst work, but at least have the AMD-V (which should cover the IOMMU too but its never clear with AMD).

Well, if Lenovo's machine dosnt have TPM, then i dont know how should i get an AMD machine with it.

Tried the 3.1 Live dvd and the Atheros Wifi is not detected, i have a spare intel one so might try to swap it but Lenovo can have hardware whitelist, so dont have too high hopes for it.
Realtech gigabit lan is detected though.

Didnt tried anything else.
Qubes-HCL-LENOVO-80EC-20151111-051252.yml

timwelter

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Nov 12, 2015, 11:41:33 PM11/12/15
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A lot of the intel ones I think are whitelisted as Lenovo tend to rely heavily on intel hw.

When I a few months ago went thru the process of picking a laptop specific for Qubes and as future proof as possible going forward with it I ended finding that Lenovo T series line to offer the most complete supported options for the various models.  Once you get into the more consumer level models you start to get limited.  But then again the T series are outside the price range of your model so...

GD

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Nov 13, 2015, 9:18:34 AM11/13/15
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I specifically looking for AMD models to skip the vPro features/backdoor but still have vt-d/iommu support.

timwelter

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Nov 13, 2015, 3:51:57 PM11/13/15
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There are a some of the intel that have Vt-d VT-x but not pro features I recall while looking.

GD

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Nov 17, 2015, 4:42:38 AM11/17/15
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Some of those dont have TPM inside. Although the first generation surface pro should have tpm and have a processor which list vt-d but no vpro.
I will test when UEFI support is available for Qubes. Also my 2011 Macbook Air which is in similar state.

Eric Shelton

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Nov 17, 2015, 5:09:39 PM11/17/15
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On Wednesday, November 11, 2015 at 5:47:37 AM UTC-5, GD wrote:
I seems like this CPU should have an IOMMU.  Does 'xl dmesg' in a dom0 terminal session have anything to say about trying to get the IOMMU up?

Eric 

GD

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Nov 18, 2015, 4:58:57 AM11/18/15
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I think all new-ish AMD-V compatible cpu should have IOMMU, but the motherboard should support it too as i know.
Is the absence of the TPM causing any issues with qubes?

Will check your command in the evening on the 3.1 live usb.

GD

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Nov 18, 2015, 5:18:38 PM11/18/15
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Tried the command, it says: AMD-Vi: IOMMU not found.

This is disappointing.

Eric Shelton

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Nov 18, 2015, 10:19:26 PM11/18/15
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On Wednesday, November 18, 2015 at 5:18:38 PM UTC-5, GD wrote:
Tried the command, it says: AMD-Vi: IOMMU not found.

This is disappointing.
 
It may not be quite as bad as that looks.

I do not know if AMD bothered to make chipsets that lack IOMMU hardware capability - usually the problem seems to be with the BIOS or ACPI tables (which are generated by the BIOS).  Having seem a Linux log file that found an IOMMU for your CPU, my hunch is that it is a software, not a hardware, issue that is the blocker.

Right now you do not really have any of Xen's debug logging turned on - maybe if it is enabled, Xen will provide some more information about what it sees and does not see.  Edit /boot/grub2/grub.cfg (for example, run 'sudo vi /boot/grub2/grub.cfg'), and at the first line starting with "multiboot" (assuming you are booting using the top "Qubes, with Xen hypervisor" boot option), add the following after word "placeholder":

"loglvl=all iommu=debug,amd-iommu-perdev-intremap"

For example, the revised line might look like:

    multiboot      /xen-4.4.3.gz placeholder loglvl=all iommu=debug,amd-iommu-perdev-intremap console=none ${xen_rm_opts}

The very last option (amd-iommu-perdev-intremap) might get around a bug that was common in AMD BIOSes at one point.

Then reboot, and run the 'xl dmesg' command again.  It would be helpful to post the output here.  To do that, you can redirect the output of the xl command to a file in your appvm.  For example, you can run (from a dom0 console):

xl dmesg | qvm-run --pass-io myappvm 'cat > /home/user/xl-output.txt'

where "myappvm" is the name of the appvm running the browser or email client that you are using to post to qubes-users.  Then you can just attach the file xl-output.txt to your post.

Finally, please make sure the IOMMU was turned on in the BIOS settings, assuming the option is available (although it may be a bad sign if the option is not there).

Best,
Eric

Eric Shelton

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Nov 18, 2015, 11:08:26 PM11/18/15
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FWIW, the logfiles shown on the following page suggests the HP 455 G2 may have a working IOMMU - plus, HP's specs page indicates a TPM is present:


This suggests maybe the Acer Aspire ATC-105 (A10-6700) does as well:


Plus, the Qubes HCL lists the Lenovo G505S (A10-5750M) using coreboot.



GD

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Nov 19, 2015, 6:52:17 PM11/19/15
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This Lenovo machine is going back for a refund tomorrow with courier pickup. I was surprised that lenovo didn't mad any fuss about it.

You may have missed my other HCL report but the HP Elitebook 745 G2 series have a working IOMMU and TPM out of the box:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qubes-users/zAAqfmve2kY

I had issues with it in the beginning but now i installed qubes2 on it without any problem and runs really well.
So im keeping this machine.

Pete Howell

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Nov 20, 2015, 8:26:32 AM11/20/15
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On Thursday, November 19, 2015 at 4:52:17 PM UTC-7, GD wrote:
This Lenovo machine is going back for a refund tomorrow with courier pickup. I was surprised that lenovo didn't mad any fuss about it.

You may have missed my other HCL report but the HP Elitebook 745 G2 series have a working IOMMU and TPM out of the box:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qubes-users/zAAqfmve2kY

I've found that even if they support it, features are often disabled by default in the BIOS, so it's still worth checking the settings there to ensure that it is enabled.

 

GD

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Nov 20, 2015, 8:59:02 AM11/20/15
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Yes thats where i start usually. Lenovo for some reason by default disables the virtualization, but with this notebook that was the only option i could turn on.
While the HP one i mentioned in my other post enabled me to tamper with secureboot and tpm options too.

GD

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Nov 21, 2015, 4:55:44 AM11/21/15
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Another cheap HP & AMD model which potentially have IOMMU and TPM: http://www.ebuyer.com/723849-hp-probook-455-g3-laptop-p5t06ea-abu

To bad they selling them with 1377x768 screens.

Noah Vesely

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Apr 8, 2016, 2:15:57 AM4/8/16
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You can thank Joanna for that actually. Was curious too why it's disabled by default and apparently it's thanks to fears about blue pill attacks.
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