HCL - System76 Galago Pro 2 (N131BU)

User Support HCL Reports
1

QubesOS works fine.

It showed the common error “Unable to reset PCI device” error as described on: PCI troubleshooting | Qubes OS and followed the instructions as provided there which resolved the issue.

  • Webcam works
  • Mic works
  • USB works
  • wifi works
  • CAT45 Network card works
  • USB works
  • Suspend works, if you wait the 30 seconds and let it turn off itself.

If you click yes to avoid the 30 second wait it goes to the login screen instead.
Then at the top you need to select Suspend again to make it to Suspend. Not sure if related to the hardware.)

Screen does not turn-off when machine is idle for a while but goes black instead. Screen backlight remains on. Have not found a solution for that but it is minor.

High Resolution screen causes everything to be extremely small and configuring this correctly takes time. See for the solution (thanks to the amazing @Sven) here: 4k font size dom0 vs vm - #9 by trounces

System76 Galago Models support CoreBoot automatically from the Galago Pro 3 and on which is awesome. But for the Galago Pro 2 you need to purchase some hardware to flash it manually (something I did not do yet but this is not recommended for the normal user). See: firmware-open/models/galp2 at master · system76/firmware-open · GitHub and firmware-open/docs/flashing.md at master · system76/firmware-open · GitHub (this manual flashing does not apply to the newer Galago’s which you can install coreboot on without flashing using any hardware).

layout:
‘hcl’
type:
‘notebook’
hvm:
‘yes’
iommu:
‘yes’
slat:
‘yes’
tpm:
‘unknown’
remap:
‘yes’
brand: |
System76
model: |
Galago Pro
bios: |
1.05.12-1
cpu: |
Intel(R) Core™ i5-7200U CPU @ 2.50GHz
cpu-short: |
FIXME
chipset: |
Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v6/7th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers [8086:5904] (rev 02)
chipset-short: |
FIXME
gpu: |
Intel Corporation HD Graphics 620 [8086:5916] (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
gpu-short: |
FIXME
network: |
Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12)
Intel Corporation Wireless 8265 / 8275 (rev 78)
memory: |
32548
scsi: |

usb: |
1
versions:

  • works:
    ‘FIXME:yes|no|partial’
    qubes: |
    R4.1
    xen: |
    4.14.3
    kernel: |
    5.10.90-1
    remark: |
    FIXME
    credit: |
    FIXAUTHOR
    link: |
    FIXLINK
1 Like
2

Thank you @trounces for your HCL report, which is online now.

3

Update:

While working for a while now on QubesOS 4.1 I noticed the following issues:

When the Xfce Power Manager turns off the screen, it does not really turn off, it just turns blank, while I set it to turn off after 10 minutes but it remains blank so in the dark you can continue to see the blank screen glowing light. For hours. When I move the mouse the login screen returns which then disappears after a while but the screen remains on.

When I suspend and Resume the laptop the external HDD (block device) have disconnected.

I saw the Suspend/resume troubleshooting | Qubes OS but that did not resolve it. I have not found a solution so far. The last one I do not know if this is related to the System76 hardware or something else.

4

@trounces:

remains blank so in the dark you can continue to see the blank screen glowing light

I have the same issue sometimes under R4.0. What always fixes it for me:

  • open “Scrensaver”
  • File | Restart Daemon
  • Advanced | Display Power Management …
    • uncheck and re-check “Power Management Enabled”
    • uncheck and re-check “Quick Power-off in Blank Only Mode”

The last option is the one that needs to be checked for the effect you wish to see. However every now and then it seems to stop working and I do the dance above.

3 Likes
5

Awesome!! That worked.

I was at the Xfce Power Manager in the power manager menu but that was the wrong place to be.

I assume it isn’t possible to remove or disable the Display tab from the Xfce Power Manager to help avoid others from changing the screen settings there instead of the XscreenSaver Preferences screen? That could be a solution.

6

Since July 2022 Update it crashes frequently. See: QubesOS freeze, crash and reboots - #243 by trounces

It is impossible to use the machine for Online meetings, such as Google Meet:

It may work sometimes, but you cannot rely on it for important meetings.

7

I recently decided to take a chance on a System76 Galaga Pro and test it with 4.2rc3 before making it my main. I have a few quick notes on the experience with so far and can make a proper HCL for it later when 4.2 is stable. Some of these issues may be caused by 4.2 still being experimental though.

Install is fine. No surprises here.

The default firmware is very minimal and there’s nothing to do besides turn TPM and Secure Boot off/on, or pick a boot device. It also seems to only be able to boot UEFI, so no way to use AEM. There’s also no way to set SMT off here either. Maybe the Coreboot firmware has more options.

Battery life seems poor. Lower than expected, even with the laptop idling. Still investigating this.

I enabled SMT as I believe the vulnerability that prompted that to be disabled in Qubes does not affect this CPU.

The laptop gets hot, though this is not a Qubes problem. Apparently System76 lets the chassis act as passive cooling until some certain temperature, which is quite high IMO. The fans can be forced on with Super+1, and if you want to flash the firmware, you can customize when they come on.

There’s no insert key on this model. This seems to be a trend with recent laptops. I’m hoping this isn’t a major problem.

Reboot sometimes hangs at the end of the shutdown process and power needs to be manually forced off. I don’t recall PopOS doing this, but I didn’t spend a lot of time on that. Probably a problem caused by Qubes.

Wireless and ethernet work out of the box.

The keyboard and trackpad work without sys-usb.

The CPU has performance and efficient cores. I’ve not made an attempt to alter which VMs run on which cores, but everything seems to work fine anyway. Unless this is what’s causing the poor battery life.

1 Like
8

@moonlitOrca any update on USB controllers situation?

9

I have not dug deeply into the architecture of the keyboard and touchpad devices, but I can tell you that they operate entirely independently of the sys-usb qube. Basically, both touchpad and keyboard work in dom0 even if the sys-usb qube is not started or if it is hung and frozen. I have had sys-usb break before and no issues with the keyboard or touchpad.

I am not sure how they connect exactly, perhaps via serial IO? They do not show up in the “qubes devices” manager in the taskbar. Either way, definitely they do not depend on USB. The fingerprint reader, on the other hand, does seem to be in the deice list and so maybe that is dependent on USB?

10

I doubt it at least about touchpad. I do not know if touchpad without USB connection even exist.
On Thinkpad T16 Gen1 only keyboard and trackpoint is connected using something like PS/2, but touchpad seems to be a USB device.

11

The touchpad on my librem13 will work even after shutting sys-usb off (as will the keyboard. I lose the mouse I attach to it though).

That would seem to indicate the kyboard and touchpad on Librem 13s don’t go through USB.

12

Well, if one shutdowns sys-usb and touchpad is connected to it, then touchpad starts to be managed by dom0 and it expected to continue to work (unless kernel option rd.qubes.hide_all_usb is used).

The fair test is to connect all USB controllers to some standalone HVM qube that has no qubes-related packages at all and does not redirect input to dom0.
If this does not break touchpad and keyboard, than it is cool. It would men they are connected not though internal USB controller.

Beware, keyboard and mouse may or will stop working so, be ready fix the situation back like that.

13

It’s unnecessary, you can open /proc/bus/input/devices and see how they are connected.

On my X280 and T480, both use PS/2 for the keyboard and rmi_smbus for the touchpad and trackpoint, they are not connected using USB.

14

No, what generally happens when you stop sys-usb with keyboards, touchpads, mice, etc. connected to it…is those objects freeze up, because dom0 is by design not allowed to re-accept control of the objects.

If I shut down sys-usb on my desktop (with usb mouse and keyboard), it basically becomes a brick until either sys-usb restarts for some reason, or I restart the desktop computer, because with both the keyboard and mouse effectively dead, I can’t do anything. (I have a cron job set up to restart sys-usb if it ever stops, for this very reason. I just have to wait a minute or two and my keyboard and mouse again become useful.)

If I shut down sys-usb on my laptop, ONLY the usb wireless mouse freezes. That tells me my keyboard and touchpad don’t have anything to do with usb, or they too would freeze.

15

Maybe you are right, if no freezing is happening even for a brief moment of time during sys-usb shutdown.
Also qvm-usb can show the list of devices, if there is no touchpad there (can be named differently) then it is probably not USB indeed.

16

Correct, the touchpad and keyboard for me are not listed under qvm-usb. And they always work even if every VM is frozen. But this result I am expressing is for the Framework laptop, and I see this is now under the System76 HCL, just to calrify for those who read through here.

17

My apologies, I was responding to what looked like a general statement pertaining to any laptop.

18

Oh no worries at all! I just wanted to let any readers coming in know that my comment was about the Framework laptop specifically (which is where this series of posts was moved from, I believe). I think your insight was helpful to any laptop.