keyboard backspace bug for x230-hotp-maximized (x230t)

[Kawaiisu]

So I was excited to get heads installed and my nitrokey setup. But then realised I have some sort of bug on all three laptops. No matter the OS, if its linux it locks the screen or just doesn't do anything. Same issue on 1 x230 tablet and 2 x230 notebooks.

How can I go about fixing this? I'm not a seasoned developer so please have mercy on me.

Thank you

[tlaurion]

@Kawaiisu what is your backspace bug?

I had the following bug on x230t but in OS (QubesOS) not under Heads, if your bug is that the backspace is not linked to the right keymap for some reason: QubesOS/qubes-issues#3306

Please describe actual behavior and expected behavior, which OS, and if behavior is under Heads or not.
The operating system being kexec'ed, Heads should not have any influence on the OS behavior. We are interested in the behaviors happening inside of Heads.

[Kawaiisu]

Hi,

I went to powershell from Heads and they backspace and backspace keys seem to be fine.

Then I tested debian 10 live and found that the backslash and pipe key "\ |" seems not to function. As well as Backspace.

Again in Qubes OS, same as debian 10, the backspace or backslash doesn't seem to function.

On Tails backslash does nothing but backspace in this instance locks the screen.

I visited this: QubesOS/qubes-issues#3306

Am I supposed to overwrite xmodmap_x230t.txt from Dom 0?

But what about every other operating system? Doesn't it mean there's something I need to do in heads to make sure its permanent across all operating systems? We use many live operating systems.

Thank you.

[tlaurion]

@Kawaiisu The problem was never resolved. Last time I checked with QubesOS, fix was temporary, and was not able to map it correctly over reboot and was randomly showing back. Looked for help, found none, gave up.

AFAIK, the issue is relevant to x230t alone, not x230 (I have not that problem at all).
The problem should be the same for all x230t being detected as x230 and having issues with keymaps ins OSes who thinks the x230t is a x230. That seems to be the issue, being present across all Linuxes. If there is one operating system not showing the behavior, then that OS fixed the issue and the interest of checking what is different from that OS to others showing bad behavior becomes interesting.

If you find the solution elsewhere, please link to the fix. It seems that no one cared, including myself, since I do not use my x230t but to test Heads builds. AFAIK that QubesOS issue included all the pertinent information that I had found from that time. If you find something new, please ressucitate that issue, since as you discovered, is still present. Also, as you saw, the issue is not having any relevance to Heads, since the behavior is not present.

So the issue here is irrelevant.

[fhvyhjriur]

AFAIK, the issue is relevant to x230t alone, not x230 (I have not that problem at all).
The problem should be the same for all x230t being detected as x230 and having issues with keymaps ins OSes who thinks the x230t is a x230. That seems to be the issue, being present across all Linuxes. If there is one operating system not showing the behavior, then that OS fixed the issue and the interest of checking what is different from that OS to others showing bad behavior becomes interesting.

If you find the solution elsewhere, please link to the fix.

@tlaurion Could you use the x230t coreboot config for x230t? Skulls is building separate images for x230 and x230t because the devices are not exactly same. https://github.com/merge/skulls
x230t support was merged in coreboot on 03.2020 here: https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/38482

It would also make more sense for people who switch from skulls to heads to flash a x230t image when they had before also a x230t skulls-coreboot image.

[tlaurion]

@ fhvyhjriur Heads is a community project.
There is a porting guide on heads-wiki. As you saw for #925 its not really useful neither for myself nor others to do ports for hardware I do not use. The people that have needs should be the one pushing changes. This is mentality of open source and is called Selfish Contributionism. Maintainership is the main problem of open source projects. It would be counter productive that I accept to bring a board to a project I do not use, for whichI will then be asked to maintain. It won't happen.

Consequently, I will not do the port for x230t but will invite x230t, t400 and other not supported board owners to propose pull requests.

And will hold my stance on maintaining and trying to continue to do quality work on my community time, for which i'm not paid for. Hope the message reached its audience.

Free software doesn't mean free as in free beer. Everyone has 24h in a day. If it's important for you, you will take the required time to make it happen, asking questions, proposing code; not requiring others to do the work at your place. This is how it works.

I recognize, though, that if x230t is detected as a x230 because of coreboot, x230t board definition might be the answer to upstream bug.

Letting people take their fish lines instead of providing unlimited fish supply:
cp config/coreboot-x230.config build/coreboot-ver/.config
cd build/coreboot-ver/
make menuconfig
(do config changes needed)
make savedefconfig
cp .config ../../config/coreboot-x230t.config
cd -
cp -r boards/x230/ boards/x230t/
mv boards/x230t/x230.config boards/x230t/x230t.config
vi boards/x230t/x230t.config
(change path for coreboot-x230.config to coreboot-x230t.config)
make BOARD=x230t
(adjust until it compiles)
git checkout -b x230t
git add board/* config/*
git commit
git push
create PR.

[fhvyhjriur]

@tlaurion
I also dont have a x230t at the moment. It was just a idea how @Kawaiisu could be helped. The x230t have for example some different gpio compared to the x230. You wrote that you had a x230t for testing images.

You asked for a link for a possible solution. Thats why i linked the x230t coreboot commit. That would fix the problem that the x230t is been detected as a x230 when a x230 coreboot images is been used. I thought you maybe do not know that it was merged in 03.2020 to coreboot and it would be some help to mention this.

EDIT: When i wrote the text, your last edit of your text did not had this line: 'I recognize, though, that if x230t is detected as a x230 because of coreboot, x230t board definition might be the answer to upstream bug.'
Yes, this was the reason why i wrote what i had wrote before.

[tlaurion]

@tlaurion
I also dont have a x230t at the moment. It was just a idea how @Kawaiisu could be helped. The x230t have for example some different gpio compared to the x230. You wrote that you had a x230t for testing images.

You asked for a link for a possible solution. Thats why i linked the x230t coreboot commit. That would fix the problem that the x230t is been detected as a x230 when a x230 coreboot images is been used. I thought you maybe do not know that it was merged in 03.2020 to coreboot and it would be some help to mention this.

I did'nt know. That would then be linked to x230-maximized images, being pushed to coreboot newer version, which are still not merged upstream under Heads. My comment is still relevant. Code should be borrowed, modified, tested functional, and then proposed for merged, tested and then upstreamed by the people who need the changes.

[fhvyhjriur]

@tlaurion I watched https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/selfish_contributor/
My "selfish motivation" bringing up a idea how to maybe help @Kawaiisu and all other heads users is because heads is a way to do important work as a investigative journalist that travel around the world and have to leave the device for a moment at some place that is not secure.
@Kawaiisu is a new user that have register fresh to github to report this problem. So i expect that this user needs heads to do something important to the society and needs help with that.
I want to live a life in a knowledgeable society with free access to free(copyleft) knowledge. I am also "selfish motivated" to support old hardware because of freedom(low purchase price, low to none dependencies to startup based on closed source software) and environmental benefits. My "selfish motivation" in for example getting broken printers from electrical waste and soldering out their 8MiB and 16MiB spi chips and putting those SPI chips in thinkpads that have 4MiB or less. To get heads support for such devices is something i am interested in after learning facts about this world.
I am not a developer and i am not good at writing code. I depend, like mentioned in the https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/selfish_contributor/ video, mainly on commit messages that explain what the commit have done.
And because T400 was mentioned - i have spend happily some hours into taking a T400 apart and writing with a external programmer some heads testing-image and reporting if its working or not. I would do this work again to help adding support for T400 and other devices that are not supported in heads recently. Adding heads-support for all x86_64 devices that coreboot support and that can run in perfect case with 100% free software except cpu-microcode is part of my "selfish motivation". It would be my "selfish motivation" until RISC-V based portable devices are available at the same price and amount like ~10 year old Thinkpads that heads support recently. At least until devices like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novena_(computing_platform) and now https://mntre.com/reform get the same produced amount like the thinkpad **00, **10, **20 and **30 series combined together.

At some parts of this world the 11.01.2021 have begun. This is the 8th year since the death of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz . My "selfish motivation" is to help the world to be a better place for people with such a free mind like Aaron had.

[Thrilleratplay]

@fhvyhjriur

Could you use the x230t coreboot config for x230t?

Yes. My Heads test device is a 230T. As far as I can tell is the only difference between the x230 and x230T coreboot configurations is gpio33 changed from output to input. This probably has to do with using the touchscreen as an input during boot up.

[tlaurion]

@Thrilleratplay did you figured out why backspace was not functionning properly on Qubesos and other OSes?

[tlaurion]

@Kawaiisu first question first. Is the bad behavior present with stock Lenovo BIOS on live cds?

@fhvyhjriur lookin at coreboot changes, I doubt sincerely that the changes would resolve the keyboard issue.

With that first question here answered, avenues of solutions can then be nrrowed down.

Vivid memories for Swartz. Sympathetic to the cause. Thanks for reminding me why we do this. Just remember time is a limited resource, I don't intend to be rude.

[Thrilleratplay]

@tlaurion I haven't had an issue with the backspace. I'll try the latest build tomorrow

[Thrilleratplay]

@tlaurion Open source projects are rife with burnout and you put in a considerable amount of work to Heads. It is important to be reminded why you it. The personal reasons that drive you to contribute so much to Heads are your own. I understand the importance and do what I can with my time, resources and energy but pales in comparison to you do to keep this project going. Thank you.

[Thrilleratplay]

@Kawaiisu I am going to assume you did not do any keyboard swap or Thinkpad-EC style EC modifications to allow third party batteries.

What country are all of these laptops from? If they are not all North American Models, I wonder if something like the default grub keymap does not work on certain regional keyboards.

I still have to test this myself.

[Thrilleratplay]

@tlaurion @Kawaiisu I may have reproduced this. I am confused on whether it is just the backspace key or all keys that do not work? I flashed the latest x230 maximized build artifact from CircleCI and everything seems to work fine but occasionally after a reboot, the keyboard does not seem to be initialized. It also only seems to happen when rebooting from the emergency shell either with the command reboot or ctrl-alt-del.

EDIT: Oops, I used a test build. Let me try one from master.....and osresearch does not allow/have any projects in circleCI because there is only a 404 when I click on projects.

EDIT 2: Updated master on my fork and used the CircleCI build heads-x230-maximized-v0.2.0-1006-g6bc40d7.rom. If I boot into a USB image of Debian 9, I can go into a prompt and still use the backspace and pipe characters on the keyboard.