[ipxe-devel] Keyboard problem with new USB/xHCI options

[Michael Brown]

On 11/03/15 14:31, Bovey Christian wrote:
> We used iPXE with success for 3 years now.
>
> With the latest versions (supporting the xHCI PCH8 / 9), we have
> problems with the keyboard on new computers.
>
> We have compiled the latest version but with our last computer (HP
> Elitedesk 800 G1) keyboard turns off when iPXE loads. Everything works
> well on older machines (eg. HP Elite 8000).
>
> By using an older version (03/03/2015) of files "drivers / usb / xHCI.
> *", everything works fine on both computers.

My guess: the keyboard is plugged in to a port which can be configured 
as either USB2 (routed to the EHCI controller) or USB3 (routed to the 
xHCI controller).  Your ports are probably configured as "auto" 
USB2/USB3 in the BIOS setup.  As of the PCH8/9 commit 
(http://git.ipxe.org/ipxe.git/commitdiff/ff32040), iPXE will switch 
these ports over to the xHCI controller.  This will have the unfortunate 
side effect of disconnecting your keyboard from the EHCI controller 
(which is still providing legacy USB keyboard emulation), and so your 
keyboard is no longer usable.

iPXE will eventually have to add its own USB keyboard driver, since 
there's no way to leave the BIOS legacy USB keyboard emulation running 
while using USB NICs connected to the same controller.

In the meantime, you should be able to use the BIOS setup to configure 
the relevant port as USB2 only; this will prevent it from being rerouted 
to xHCI by iPXE.

> Other questions, we tried the EFI version, but the HTTPS protocol is not
> working. Is it currently supported? If not, will it be soon?

There is no entropy source available under UEFI and hence the RNG fails 
its start-of-day self-tests.  There is a patch to add an entropy source 
available somewhere in the xCAT repository; I haven't merged this yet 
because (from memory) of some uncertainty as to the amount of entropy it 
generates.

Michael