Installing Ubuntu 14.10 (64-bit) on a Windows 8 bay trail atom tablet

Question

I am trying pass value from jenkins to ansible. However, I am hitting below exception. This only happen for group_vars, for hosts, there is no issue.

ERROR! vars file group_vars/"{{ param }}"/vars.yml was not found on the Ansible Controller

- hosts: "{{ param }}"-value
  roles:
    - tests
  vars_files:
    - group_vars/"{{ param  }}"/vars.yml
    - group_vars/all/vars.yml

Solution

Note: As of right now, Ubuntu 15.04 will BOOT on a bay trail tablet, but it will not install correctly.

My guide is based mostly on this one, but with minor adjustments, and easier to follow instructions. This guide is tested and working on the Winbook Tw100 Windows 8 tablet (by Microcenter).

You may require:

1. USB OTG (on the go) cable, for connecting the USB drive/keyboard/mouse
2. A 4GB or more USB flash drive
3. Any downloads mentioned below
4. You will need to disable Secure Boot and change the boot order in your tablet's BIOS settings

Problem 1: Booting a 64-bit OS with a 32-bit UEFI BIOS on a 64-bit CPU (it's like a jigsaw puzzle)

1. Download the latest Ubuntu 14.10 (64-bit) ISO file
2. Download Universal USB Installer
3. Use Universal USB Installer to create a bootable Ubuntu 14.10 USB drive
4. Download this bootia32.efi file from GitHub
5. Place the bootia32.efi file you just downloaded into the EFI/BOOT/ folder of the bootable Ubuntu 14.10 USB drive you just created
6. Download these two .deb files, and place at the ROOT of the USB drive
   NOTE: due to broken links, files have been moved to Google Drive for permanent storage.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxPvhHHEJKxNTzZqX0VBdFNfZ2M/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-BQVRZayI7OSvEszaK7Dtlg

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxPvhHHEJKxNY25ZdW5KcEhLeG8/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-Hrq8K6bMvbFoEovBO7brnA

7. Connect the USB drive to your tablet and power it on

You should be presented with a screen like this, choose "Try Ubuntu without installing"

Problem 2: Installing, and making the installation stick!

1. After Ubuntu has finished booting, manually partition your tablet's internal storage

1.5. If you want to Dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows 8, you'll have to do all your partitioning using Windows disk management 2. After you have finished manually partitioning your tablet's internal storage, install Ubuntu like normal 3. When the installation has finished, leave the USB drive connected to your tablet, and restart 4. When you are presented with the GRUB screen again, hit the "C" key, and enter these lines of code...

you might need to change the "(hd0,gpt5)" and "/dev/mmcblk0p3" sections of code to suit your specific needs

linux (hd0,gpt5)/boot/vmlinuz-3.16.0-23-generic root=/dev/mmcblk0p3

initrd (hd0,gpt5)/boot/initrd-3.16.0-23-generic

Now enter the "boot" command. If you were successful, you should not have received any error messages, and booted into your freshly installed Ubuntu 14.10 installation. If you receive any error messages, try the last two steps again.

5. Open a terminal, and enter "sudo apt-get remove grub-efi-amd64"

6. after that has finished, open the USB drive, and install these two .deb packages in the order that they are listed

7. grub-efi-ia32-bin_2.02~beta2-15_amd64.deb

8. grub-efi-ia32_2.02~beta2-15_amd64.deb

9. Open a terminal, and type "sudo update-grub"

10. Restart

And you're done!!! If you followed these steps very carefully, and to the letter, then you have a (not-so) fully functioning 64-bit Ubuntu 14.10 (and possibly Windows 8 dual-boot) bay trail tablet.

What doesn't work (this is a list for the Tw100, your tablet may be different)

1. Sound
2. Touchscreen
3. Battery (ACPI)
4. Accelerometer (tilting, screen rotation)

Check out this guide I did on how to boot Ubuntu 15.04 on bay trail tablets.

Comments

[Ulincsys]

Maintaining a current status post on Ubuntu/bay trail compatibility here: ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2294927

[Jack]

The files in the group_vars folder are picked up automatically. The hosts in the {{ param }} group will have those variables set, and all hosts will have the variables from group_vars/all/ files. You either need to change to hosts: "{{ param }}", or change the folder names to addd -value to them all.

[Ulincsys]

Tested the latest (wily-desktop-amd64.iso) 15.10 image on the same hardware, no apparent progress has been made concerning the compatibility issues that Ubuntu has with Bay Trail hardware. Will update within the next couple weeks of daily builds.

[soft developer]

let me try ya. what did you mean by " quotes " are only needed when a value starts with {{". param is the value being passed. however will try it now

[soft developer]

can work. for host as well i removed the " mark. wonder when it will be used for " mark

[Reiner Nippes]

key: {{ value }} won't work. it's not valid a yaml syntax. you have to write key: "{{ value }}" but key: some_{{ value }} will work.