Aarch64 Fedora 44 and Microsoft Surface

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1

Hi,

Am looking for some support or guidelines.

Bought a brand new Surface pro 12 inch (first gen) device where I’d like to run Fedora as a daily driver for some media consumption and browsing activities.

I settled for this ARM device based on the progress I read on github. Looking at Harrison 's feedback most should work by now;

I read the Fedora change by Hans to load the device specific ARM DTB;

When I checked Stubble I can find some entries related to the SP12inch device so decided to write a live ISO using Fedora Media Writer under Windows.

Stubble HWID; stubble/hwids/txt/x1p42100-microsoft-surface-pro-12in.txt at main · ubuntu/stubble · GitHub

I changed the secure boot parameters to accept Microsoft & third parties, and booted from USB. After few seconds the grub menu loads. Unfortunately I’m unable to initiate a command and after few seconds the PC reboots.

Since I’m using a KVM and wireless MS Sculpt keyboard I figured it would be wise to connect directly without KVM, so used a brand new wireless Logitech keyboard; connected the dongle to an “USB A to C” adapter, tried again but without luck.. Grub seems to freeze and just reloads.

So I am wondering how I could check if Stubble on Fedora 44 workstation Aarch64 ISO build already contains the DTB file for my device, or if something else is wrong. Would someone would have some ideas on how to debug this one?

I read somewhere on the Ubuntu forums they had a similar issue, and used Ventoy to build a bootable stick. So this is already on my shortlist to try this evening. Already tried Rufus without luck.

Am also considering to modify the grub config to auto load instead of showing the menu, to make sure it is not a keyboard issue. But not fully sure how to do this as I never created my own bootable iso :slight_smile:

Any help is appreciated as I spent few nights already in trying to get it fixed.

The Grub menu that just reboots:

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2

So, i tried using Ventoy to boot my media.

Disabled secure boot in Ventoy and BIOS so I could boot Ventoy. Placed KDE and Gnome arm iso on the stick (to see if it makes a difference) and my keyboard now works.

Both Fedora versions give me the following issues;
*On normal mode I get an error when starting livemode..

Error: invalid magic number, you need to load the kernel first.

*On grub mode I get an error when starting live mode..

Error invalid magic number, can’t find command ‘innitrd’

So according what I can find these errors are related to potentially corrupt iso files. But downloaded it few times and that seems unlikely. Looks more like a Ventoy issue. Positive thing is that I now know for sure keyboard works :slight_smile: