[SOLVED] Acer Swift 7 Hard drive not recognized how to get it supported

kilgoretrout · 11-15-2016, 10:02 AM

I'm wondering if it's something in your Kingston SSD rather than the SATA controller. My thinking is that you appear to have a standard Intel chipset with a standard Intel SATA controller. If there was a regression in newer kernels with regard to that chipset, I would expect many reports of similar problems but I don't see any. It might be that Acer's hardware has modified that chipset in some non-standard way which would account for the lack of similar problems being reported. Or it might be the Kigston SSD. If you have another standard laptop hard drive and if the hard drive is easy to get at, you could try swapping out the Kingston SSD and see if you get a different result.

erik2282 · 11-15-2016, 12:48 PM

I wonder how the 3.16 kernel on Debian stable would do on your laptop. Try it out. Delete all partitions first and start fresh during install.

Ztcoracat · 11-15-2016, 02:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by feurry

o.k. just rebooted and double checked, the SATA setting in BIOS is AHCI and it is grayed out and cannot be changed.

I read online last night that AHCI enabled in the BIOS may help. I'm sorry, I don't know how you would change that if it's grayed out.
This search may help with that:

https://www.google.com/search?site=&...k1.9cBLiFhtVV0

Fedora is cutting edge. Give it a try like our Moderator; jefro suggested:-
When nothing else on my Sony Vaio laptop (brand new) would work; Fedora did.

Ztcoracat · 11-15-2016, 02:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kilgoretrout

I'm wondering if it's something in your Kingston SSD rather than the SATA controller. My thinking is that you appear to have a standard Intel chipset with a standard Intel SATA controller. If there was a regression in newer kernels with regard to that chipset, I would expect many reports of similar problems but I don't see any. It might be that Acer's hardware has modified that chipset in some non-standard way which would account for the lack of similar problems being reported. Or it might be the Kigston SSD. If you have another standard laptop hard drive and if the hard drive is easy to get at, you could try swapping out the Kingston SSD and see if you get a different result.

Regression was my first thought too:-
Regression would show in the changelogs right?

I read several articles online and a few people said that as soon as they installed a different brand of SSD in their laptops it was recognized.

kilgoretrout · 11-15-2016, 08:23 PM

Quote:

o.k. just rebooted and double checked, the SATA setting in BIOS is AHCI and it is grayed out and cannot be changed.

I'm guessing AHCI is grayed out because the bios has been locked in AHCI mode and there is no option to put it into IDE mode. That would make sense with a laptop that comes with an SSD since you would never want to put that in IDE mode.

Quote:

Regression would show in the changelogs right?

If they were aware of it, I would think so.

Quote:

I read several articles online and a few people said that as soon as they installed a different brand of SSD in their laptops it was recognized.

I'm curious about this. Could you post some links if you have time? This part of his dmesg output from when he booted in legacy mode sure looks to me like a problem with the Kingston SSD:

Code:

[   27.571705] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      KINGSTON RBUSNS4 00.2 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[   27.601921] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdb] 500118192 512-byte logical blocks: (256 GB/238 GiB)
[   27.601940] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
[   27.601962] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[   27.601963] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[   27.601981] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[   58.648681] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x8000000 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
[   58.648721] ata1.00: failed command: READ FPDMA QUEUED
[   58.648750] ata1.00: cmd 60/08:d8:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 27 ncq dma 4096 in
                        res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
[   58.648784] ata1.00: status: { DRDY }
[   58.648797] ata1: hard resetting link
[   58.961753] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 320)
[   64.039486] ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
[   64.040973] ata1.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4)
[   64.040974] ata1.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
[   64.040999] ata1: hard resetting link
[   64.361471] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 320)
[   74.587947] ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
[   74.589293] ata1.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4)
[   74.589294] ata1.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
[   74.589320] ata1: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps
[   74.589321] ata1.00: limiting speed to UDMA/133:PIO2
[   74.589323] ata1: hard resetting link
[   74.910208] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
[  105.976108] ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
[  105.978791] ata1.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x4)
[  105.978792] ata1.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
[  105.978813] ata1.00: disabled
[  105.980162] ata1: hard resetting link
[  106.298369] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
[  106.299716] ata1: EH complete
[  106.299729] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#29 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[  106.299730] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#29 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[  106.299731] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0
[  106.299753] Buffer I/O error on dev sdb, logical block 0, async page read
[  106.299819] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#1 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[  106.299820] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#1 CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[  106.299821] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0
[  106.299823] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdb] Read Capacity(16) failed: Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[  106.299824] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense not available.
[  106.299832] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdb] Read Capacity(10) failed: Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[  106.299833] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense not available.
[  106.299851] Buffer I/O error on dev sdb, logical block 0, async page read
[  106.299950] ldm_validate_partition_table(): Disk read failed.
[  106.299953] Dev sdb: unable to read RDB block 0
[  106.299971]  sdb: unable to read partition table
[  106.299977] sdb: partition table beyond EOD, enabling native capacity
[  106.300164] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdb] Read Capacity(16) failed: Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK

Ztcoracat · 11-15-2016, 09:39 PM

https://social.technet.microsoft.com...cotSQ%29%28%29

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/foru...boot-question/

http://www.pctechbytes.com/hardware/...ow-up-in-bios/

feurry · 11-16-2016, 08:01 AM

rokytnji: I can't install the older kernel or newer kernel in ubuntu 16.04, because I can't get 16.04 installed in the first place, since it doesn't see the drive. I could go with 14.x but then I have no internet and it'd be a huge pain. I'd rather help get the bug sorted, however I go about that.

I was trying to roll my own live cd with a new kernel in virtualbox, but my first attempt failed. Haven't had time to try again.

I will try Debian Stable and Fedora, but I don't see how Fedora would fare any better than Arch, but I'll try.

On another note, freebsd installed fine, so it can find the hard drive.

Also, where should I file a bug report on this? With Ubuntu or the kernel developers? Was reading some of the kernel docs and it's a little overwhelming.

feurry · 11-16-2016, 12:53 PM

Fedora 24 did not find the hard drive either
However, debian stable did work (3.16 kernel) My wifi doesn't work, atheros qca6174, but hopefully I can get it to work with backports (ath10k driver). I have a 2 usb network cards I'm trying to get it to recognize. If this works than I can get debian installed and actually test new kernels. I did try to install stable, but grub failed to install so I'll have to sort that out too.

Ztcoracat · 11-16-2016, 07:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by feurry

Fedora 24 did not find the hard drive either
However, debian stable did work (3.16 kernel) My wifi doesn't work, atheros qca6174, but hopefully I can get it to work with backports (ath10k driver). I have a 2 usb network cards I'm trying to get it to recognize. If this works than I can get debian installed and actually test new kernels. I did try to install stable, but grub failed to install so I'll have to sort that out too.

When I installed Debian the wifi didn't work until I installed the firmware-linux-nonfree0.xx_all.deb and the firmware for my realtek wifi card.
Go to the end of the page and click on 'all' under architecture and download the firmware.
Install it with root privileges using dpkg --install <or> gdebi:- Than reboot-

This command will tell you your wifi card.

Code:

lspci | grep -i network

https://packages.debian.org/jessie/f...-linux-nonfree

Ztcoracat · 11-16-2016, 07:09 PM

Backports for firmware-atheros - Binary firmware for Atheros wireless cards
https://lists.debian.org/debian-kern.../msg00017.html

Here's the Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 rev 3.0 board configuration, version 1
(ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/board.bin)
https://packages.debian.org/sid/firmware-atheros

From this page it's the firmware-atheros-20160824-1_all.deb
https://packages.debian.org/sid/all/...heros/download

HTH

jefro · 11-16-2016, 09:50 PM

I am still getting the feeling that it is something to do with how the newer distro's know about uefi. Could be wrong on that.

Try this at least if you are still in the trying mode. https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/prerelease/#iso
Watch out for uefi bios settings as a simple change in uefi to legacy can automatically change other settings. You have to go through them all on change. Boot 25 beta in uefi.

One could go through the drivers in newer kernels to older ones but it seems unusual that a new kernel wouldn't support one of the newer boards.
Doesn't even look like a daughter board deal.

Ztcoracat · 11-16-2016, 10:39 PM

Learned this the hard way but it keeps me sane when dealing with UEFI machines.

If BIOS is set to UEFI you need to install to the 'EFI partition /boot/efi' instead of MBR. If UEFI is ‘disabled’ than installing to MBR is correct.

If BIOS is in UEFI mode installing to MBR can give ‘no boot device detected’

If LEGACY mode is active than UEFI functions are fully disabled.
The problem comes in when UEFI is enabled but Legacy roms are enabled.
Enable Legacey Roms is the most awful setting as it causes major issues with most linux os’s.

feurry · 11-18-2016, 01:31 PM

I tried the debian cd that has firmware files already on it, from here, https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/u...ding-firmware/hoping I'd be able to get one of the 2 usb wifi adapters I have to work, but it wasn't working. But it doesn't really matter because I couldn't get debian to install grub anyways.

Debian Stable got me thinking that CentOS might work. Sure enough CentOS 7 is using a 3.x series kernel. It installed very easily, and booted right up, and I managed to get one of my usb wifi cards to connect. The only problem is it stopped working after 2 minutes or so and I had to repeatedly restart the device. I also tried to use the ath10k driver from https://elrepo.org/tiki/kmod-ath10k but it seems to be using out of date firmware files. When loading the kernel module it gave errors and asked for firmware-2.bin 3.bin and 4.bin but it seems to have been updated https://github.com/kvalo/ath10k-firm.../QCA6174/hw3.0 to just firmware-4.bin, which I tried, but didn't work.

I enabled both the mainline kernel http://elrepo.org/tiki/kernel-ml and the long term support kernel http://elrepo.org/tiki/kernel-lt but when I booted either one of those they failed to boot because they couldn't read the hard drive.

So, if I had the right usb wifi card, CentOS 7 would have been a go.

Then I realized I could just install to a spare USB pendrive and boot from that. I spent hours on this and debian and ubuntu would install fine, but then the usb would be unbootable. When I press F12 on boot my firmware will show me any bootable GPT/EFI devices, which is how I was booting the live images, but the Ubuntu installed on a pendrive never showed up.

I believe the problem is Ubuntu was not creating a 1 MB free partition at the start of the pendrive, which I noticed rufus was adding to every live usb stick it created. I also suspected problems with the EFI partition and tried to resolve both but decided on another approach. I have a working grub menu on my main hard drive thanks to the CentOS install, so I just go into the grub command line and was able to manually boot using:

Code:

configfile (hd0,3)/boot/grub/grub.cfg

then I would see the Ubuntu grub menu, but it would fail to boot with some kind of "linux command not found". So then I had to highlight the Ubuntu entry and hit e to edit, changing linux to linuxefi and initrd to initrdefi and then it would boot.

Back to CentOS.

Install CentOS to usb pendrive, reboot, and all of a sudden the device appears in my bios boot menu and I can boot straight into CentOS from my usb drive.

Then I kept the partitions the same and installed Ubuntu. Except for some reason when I booted up it would take me to the CentOS grub menu and I had to manually boot Ubuntu again from grub command line. The somewhere along the line, even the usb bootable device stopped appearing in my bios boot menu, so I had to resort to booting into my hard drive installed CentOS grub menu and manually starting the usb drive as before.

I tried reinstalling grub to the usb drive from Ubuntu: didn't help. https://wiki.debian.org/GrubEFIReinstall
Tried boot-repair: didn't help. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
Tried rEFInd: didn't help http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/installing.html#packagefile

I could load rEFInd etc.. but I had to manually do it from the CentOS grub menu. The usb stick never booted into a grub menu or rEFInd menu etc. I think Ubuntu/Debian are screwing up the GPT table or EFI partition on the usb stick somehow.

I know CentOS works, (minus wifi issues), so I'm going to try the latest fedora as suggested and hope that creates the proper GPT boot table on the usb drive, along with newer kernel/drivers to get wifi working.

Ubuntu works beautifully when it's booted.. i just have to jump through hoops every time to get it started.

Anyways.. I guess I'll mark this closed for now as I can at least boot into different *nixes from my usb drive and I can test new kernels now.

Thanks everyone. I'll post again after I try Fedora.

jefro · 11-18-2016, 02:41 PM

"Ubuntu installed on a pendrive never " If you used the LTS 16 and dd'ed the image to the flash drive it should have shown as a uefi bootable device if that uefi does have usb as supported in the settings. It might show up in bios hard drive order as a choice to move rather than a F key boot option sometimes.

feurry · 11-21-2016, 10:35 AM

The Ubuntu live usb works fine. It's after I've installed Ubuntu onto a usb stick that it doesn't show as a boot option. Instead of installing Ubuntu to your hard drive, install it to an external usb drive and there will be no boot option. (at least in my case)

So, Fedora latest didn't work either. The only one that worked properly is CentOS, either installed to the hard drive or installed to the usb. The problem is that Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora don't create the necessary files in the /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT partition. Either the entire folder is missing (can't remember if that was Ubuntu or Fedora) or files within the folder are missing.

The simple fix is to copy /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi to /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/grubx64.efi and then magically the usb drive will show up in the boot menu and will then startup as expected. It even worked after I upgraded kernels, and showed the new kernel as a boot option. Not sure how that works, but it did.

If you have to do it from windows, you'd see the EFI drive differently and copy D:\EFI\ubuntu\grubx64.efi to D:\EFI\BOOT\grubx64.efi