[SOLVED] Ctrl-B not working on Acer Aspire One

[mbirth]

On an Acer Aspire One netbook, the hotkey Ctrl-B doesn't do anything.

However, when loading a menu, I can navigate it and even enter the shell from there and everything works as expected.

On my desktop PC, Ctrl-B works fine.

Is this a known problem? Is there anything I can do to make it work?

[NiKiZe]

(2016-02-26 21:05)mbirth Wrote:  On an Acer Aspire One netbook, the hotkey Ctrl-B doesn't do anything.

However, when loading a menu, I can navigate it and even enter the shell from there and everything works as expected.

On my desktop PC, Ctrl-B works fine.

Is this a known problem? Is there anything I can do to make it work?

Are you using BIOS or EFI? (which file from ipxe are you using?)

If you use the menu from the config command, does the Ctrl+C to cancel edit and Ctrl+C exit menu work?

There is a known issue that some EFI implementations is buggy in regards to ctrl+ combinations.

[mbirth]

(2016-02-26 21:09)NiKiZe Wrote:  Are you using BIOS or EFI? (which file from ipxe are you using?)

This is an "Insyde H2O EFI 2.0 NB", "Intel UNDI, PXE-2.1 (build 082)" and from there I'm booting the undionly.kpxe.

(2016-02-26 21:09)NiKiZe Wrote:  If you use the menu from the config command, does the Ctrl+C to cancel edit and Ctrl+C exit menu work?

Ctrl-C works in both situations, yes. When editing, Ctrl-A also makes the cursor jump to the beginning of the line, Ctrl-E to the end.

So I guess, it's the typical EFI problem?

[NiKiZe]

(2016-02-26 21:14)mbirth Wrote:  This is an "Insyde H2O EFI 2.0 NB", "Intel UNDI, PXE-2.1 (build 082)" and from there I'm booting the undionly.kpxe.

If you boot undionly.kpxe then it is BIOS Legacy mode not EFI and my best guess then is a broken keyboard

There is no embeded script, and you still see "Press Ctrl-B for the iPXE command line" message?

You can test if Ctrl-B is working from the iPXE shell by using prompt

Code:

prompt --key 0x02 --timeout 5000 Test Ctrl-B && echo OK || echo timeout

(2016-02-26 21:14)mbirth Wrote:  Ctrl-C works in both situations, yes. When editing, Ctrl-A also makes the cursor jump to the beginning of the line, Ctrl-E to the end.

So I guess, it's the typical EFI problem?

If you where running in EFI mode (which you are not) then The fact that Ctrl+ combinations is working would be enough to show that it is not The same firmware problem we have seen before.

[mbirth]

(2016-02-26 21:21)NiKiZe Wrote:  If you boot undionly.kpxe then it is BIOS Legacy mode not EFI and my best guess then is a broken keyboard

Well, the letter "b" is working just fine when typing in the config menu. My first guess was that it's a problem because this is a German keyboard, i.e. it has an additional key. (KEYBOARD_MAP is set to "de", tried with "us" - no change.) But then there would've been more weird effects, I think.

(2016-02-26 21:21)NiKiZe Wrote:  There is no embeded script, and you still see "Press Ctrl-B for the iPXE command line" message?

Yup. Compiled it with "make bin/undionly.kpxe" without any other parameter. And the prompt shows up after the feature list.

EDIT: Tested it with the prompt command. And funny enough: Ctrl-B seems to be dead to iPXE. However, Ctrl-A (0x01) works just fine, so does Ctrl-C (0x03). I don't know what Acer did to this thing.

EDIT2: I FOUND IT! Seems like Ctrl-B is some kind of magic key or whatever. BUT: If I press Ctrl-Fn-B, it is recognised by iPXE. The Fn-key seems to map the key from "magic" back to normal. Stupid Acer.