Install on Dell XPS 13 (9350)

[miaoski]

Hi.

I have found a few threads about the installation of Qubes OS on a Dell XPS 13, but they are at least several months old.

I'm trying to install Qubes 3.2 onto Dell XPS 13 9350, which has a running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. The hardware matrix is,
* BIOS 1.2.3
* CPU i5-6200U @ 2.30 GHz
* Skylake
* FHD (mine is not QHD)
* Memory 8GB
* M.2.PCIe SSD
* TPM 1.2
* VT + DIO

I disabled secure boot and successfully booted in UEFI. Anaconda was running well, GUI showed, but keyboard and mouse don't work in the screen of language selection.

I wanted to try adding options in GRUB, but [Tab] gave me "chainloader /EFI/BOOT/xen.efi". I mounted USB disk with Qubes in Ubuntu, but its filesystem is ISO9660. I can't change /EFI/BOOT/xen.cfg.

I thought I had a chance to use Qubes OS, since XPS 13 9350 is well supported by kernels newer than 4.4. Any comments, please?

Thanks!
miaoski

[miaoski]

Installation finished with the help of a USB mouse. Internal keyboard actually works. However, UEFI boot entry is not created.

I booted to BIOS and added FS0:/EFI/qubes/xen-4.6.1.efi.
There's no problem booting to Dom0 and create default qubes + sys-usb.
Internal touchpad works as well.
Internal WiFi doesn't work as expected. Mitigating with a USB dongle.

[miaoski]

I failed to assign my TP-LINK TL-WN722N wireless USB dongle to sys-net. Google'd a bit and found some docs, still no idea on how to do it. Help is much appreciated.

Thanks!
miaoski

[Marc de Bruin]

Op 4 dec. 2016, om 07:20 heeft miaoski <lin.z...@gmail.com> het volgende geschreven:
>
> I failed to assign my TP-LINK TL-WN722N wireless USB dongle to sys-net. Google'd a bit and found some docs, still no idea on how to do it. Help is much appreciated.
>

How different is a 9350 from a 9550? I had no problems using the internal Wifi, e.g.

lspci? Just to compare?

Greetz,
Marc.

[miaoski]

Hi Marc,

2016年12月4日日曜日 17時04分38秒 UTC+8 Marc de Bruin:

> How different is a 9350 from a 9550? I had no problems using the internal Wifi, e.g.
>
> lspci? Just to compare?

9350 (2016) is a Skylake with Broadcom 4352.
I'm not sure about XPS 15 9550, but XPS 13 9350 is very similar to XPS 13 9343 (the Ubuntu developer's version).

lspci shows,
3a:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4350 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:43a3] (rev 08)

In my previous installation of Ubuntu, I had to install kernel 4.4 or 4.5 to use it.

Any possibility to use an external WiFi dongle?

[miaoski]

I can use my USB WiFi dongle by running NetworkManager on sys-usb VM.
After WiFi is connected, set the NetVM of sys-firewall to sys-usb.

I think BCM4350 has some issue with kernel 4.4.14. dmesg shows,
[ 3.558678] brcmfmac 0000:00:00.0: Xen PCI mapped GSI16 to IRQ22
[ 3.560707] brcmfmac: brcmf_chip_recognition: SB chip is not supported
[ 3.560724] brcmfmac: brcmf_pcie_probe: failed 14e4:43a3

Thanks.
miaoski

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

On Sun, Dec 04, 2016 at 08:03:48AM -0800, miaoski wrote:
> I can use my USB WiFi dongle by running NetworkManager on sys-usb VM.
> After WiFi is connected, set the NetVM of sys-firewall to sys-usb.

Yes, this is one way to use USB network adapter (IMO the simplest, if
that's your only network adapter). You may want to enable
network-manager in "services" tab of sys-usb settings.

> I think BCM4350 has some issue with kernel 4.4.14. dmesg shows,
> [ 3.558678] brcmfmac 0000:00:00.0: Xen PCI mapped GSI16 to IRQ22
> [ 3.560707] brcmfmac: brcmf_chip_recognition: SB chip is not supported
> [ 3.560724] brcmfmac: brcmf_pcie_probe: failed 14e4:43a3

There is 4.8.x kernel in "unstable" repository. You may try it but, as
the name suggests, it's much less tested. To do so, open dom0 terminal
and execute:

sudo qubes-dom0-update --enablerepo=qubes*unstable kernel-qubes-vm

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2

iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJYRI7oAAoJENuP0xzK19csF4cIAIpY0S3JNh8WXRun4Q6m9Ti2
VpfMirr5iSC05kvDaWwgEek4/k5pz12o9bfZ8exWHwlr2CxZpou4WWr3Sx4cDXWD
Nt4OiUXXiMutaRDBj8kcn69Mt6H4qnTzOrzjXewg2Rx5SV6XUIDZeO33ZqBby2Hz
p6AwQz4Jrsl1TN/RQkAt5LArO2Rtu/W6AvT1py+B8NaOICS1ZVXmQfrFs1YtdDn3
qn6AG+KWrBvb6tLSo5fJOczVWD4f6KL21GmMWNP0ElShVQzs2WBZyWs81Ft/8l/g
C1YyMZflS8JvfuCDSkSSSxvFVm8T969f0rDFrZF70duDWmtcLDf9L7xZB8U8Ops=
=slcC
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[miaoski]

Hi Marek,

Thanks for the suggestion. Just tried kernel 4.8.12_12 but same dmesg popped up.

Will try to copy a working firmware and parameters tonight.

Thanks
Miaoski

[miaoski]

It's very weird that "SB chip is not supported" showed in dmesg.
According to http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/brcm80211/brcmfmac/chip.c#L932 , it shows only when socitype == SOCI_SB and chip is not BCM4329. Given the chip is BCM4350, socitype should not be SB.

But I'm not good at driver debugging ... Help is much appreciated.

Thanks,
miaoski.

[miaoski]

Hi.

A simple solution is to use PCIe permissive mode, which weakens device isolation.
Please refer to "PCI passthrough issues" of https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/assigning-devices/

Although there is a dmesg saying
[ 2.411487] brcmfmac 0000:00:00.0: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac4350-pcie.txt failed with error -2

wlan0 works as expected.

Thanks,
miaoski.

[mossy-nw]

miaoski:

Thanks for posting this advice last year--it worked pretty well for my
XPS13 9350 until I switched to Qubes R4.0 (rc3). sys-net tray icon
shows wireless adapter as "device not managed" regardless of setting PCI
arbitrator to be less strict.

Just checking in to see if you (or anyone) is still using that laptop
and has made the switch to Qubes R4 and has an easy fix. I'll post more
details (lspci, dmesg) soon as time permits if not.

thank you!

-m0ssy

[xxx....@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, January 17, 2018 at 9:08:40 AM UTC+8, mossy-nw wrote:
> miaoski:

>
> Just checking in to see if you (or anyone) is still using that laptop
> and has made the switch to Qubes R4 and has an easy fix. I'll post more
> details (lspci, dmesg) soon as time permits if not.
>

I am in the same situation, xps 9350, the permissive trick fixed the issue in 3.2 but got the problem back in the 4.0 rc3 and rc4.
However I got it working by trying to attach the device to a PV Qube, so I switched sys-net to PV in the meantime, it works.

[mossy-nw]

xxx....@gmail.com:

Thanks for writing -- are you using permissive mode in combination with
PV mode for sys-net?

I've been relying on a usb wifi adapter, but will give this another
shot. Previously, a developer kindly addressed this via issue #3476

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/3476

To correct this, try:

sudo qubes-dom0-update --enablerepo=qubes-dom0-current-testing

I'll test this and reply here once I have _rc4 running on this machine.

-m0ssy

[xxx....@gmail.com]

Yes I stil have the permissive mode on 3a:00.0

No luck in HVM mode with the current-testing repo.
qubes-core-dom0 4.0.21
vm kernel 4.14.13-3

[Davit Barbakadze]

Sorry, but what's PV mode?

[awokd]

On Wed, February 7, 2018 9:03 am, Davit Barbakadze wrote:
> Sorry, but what's PV mode?
>
>
> On Sunday, February 4, 2018 at 7:49:19 AM UTC+4, xxx....@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> Yes I stil have the permissive mode on 3a:00.0

PV is ParaVirtual mode. It's OK for testing, but in R4.0 you want to use
PVH mode for everything except for qubes with an attached PCI device need
HVM mode.

PS I have a document update in progress explaining how to assign devices
in permissive mode in R4.0. It's a different procedure than R3.2. See
https://github.com/awokd/qubes-doc/blob/patch-15/configuration/assigning-devices.md/#pci-passthrough-issues
for the working copy. The approved version of it should end up here
eventually: https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/assigning-devices/ .

[xxx....@gmail.com]

Thank you for your help awokd, I now have sys-net running in HVM mode on the XPS 9350 wifi card in permissive mode, this resolve the issue on 4.0.

[awokd]

On Tue, February 13, 2018 11:32 am, xxx....@gmail.com wrote:
> Thank you for your help awokd, I now have sys-net running in HVM mode on
> the XPS 9350 wifi card in permissive mode, this resolve the issue on 4.0.

Glad it worked out! But consider getting a different wifi card some day
that doesn't need permissive mode, it's not the best from a security
perspective. :)

[ynw...@googlemail.com]

How did you manage to connect to the Internet? I installed qubes on USB stick and successfully booted but I have no Internet connection.

Thank you in advance.

[ynw...@googlemail.com]

Can you please help with connecting to wifi for the first time?

[awokd]

Sure, but more details would be helpful. If you have the same model laptop
and wireless card and need to enable permissive mode, check up thread for
documentation on how to do that.