USB 04fc:05d8 and NOOBS

[remaker]

The latest NOOBS on a Raspberry Pi 2 will not recognize the wireless keyboard mouse combo:

ID 04fc:05d8 Sunplus Technology Co., Ltd Wireless keyboard/mouse

I used a different wireless mouse to get through NOOBS to the Raspian install. Raspian works fine with the same device.

How might I advocate a fix? I also mentioned it at github for NOOBS.

[DougieLawson]

Opening the issue on Github should be enough.

The other option is forget using NOOBS, go with the plain Raspbian image.

[procount]

Lurch will most likely answer you on NOOBS github.

But I suspect he will say that the NOOBS Linux Kernel is very basic and contains virtually no drivers for anything except a very basic and standard USB keyboard/mouse and the wired ethernet port. There is no support for wifi dongles, USB sticks or anything else outside of this. It is a very limited buildroot installation just to get a proper OS installed. To support all of these additional drivers would make it a lot larger than it is and increase the support issues having to keep adding and installing more drivers.

If your PI is networked and you have another PC on the network, you could alter recovery.cmdline in NOOBS to include 'vncinstall' on the first line. Then you should be able to install Raspbian or one of the other OSes from NOOBS using your PC over a VNC connection in a headless fashion.

[jojopi]

I cannot see anything unusual about the device here. It is not a bluetooth keyboard and dongle, or anything that would need a different driver than a regular wired USB keyboard. It is a perfectly ordinary USB HID keyboard and mouse, and it should work.

Did the problem just happen once, or can it be reproduced? Since the device is wireless, it is possible there was a communication or pairing error between the keyboard and receiver, or a battery contact issue, rather than between the receiver and Linux.

[FTrevorGowen]

...
Did the problem just happen once, or can it be reproduced? Since the device is wireless, it is possible there was a communication or pairing error between the keyboard and receiver, or a battery contact issue, rather than between the receiver and Linux.

+1
However I have noted that NOOBS can take some time to fully detect some wireless keyboards** such that it fails to pick up numeric (video mode selection) key presses/toggles until after its re-arranged the partitioning of the SDHC card during the very first boot (which may take quite some time for large SDHC cards - I've observed delays of 10's of seconds with 8 or 16Gb cards). In practice, such as when wanting to use composite video, you may have to wait until the ACTivity led stops blinking and then retry 'Shift', '3', '4' etc.****
Trev.
** Such as this one:
http://www.cpmspectrepi.webspace.virgin ... yBall.html
**** As originally noted here:
http://www.cpmspectrepi.webspace.virgin ... ellow.html

[remaker]

It's fully reproducible. Once NOOBS install Raspian, the wireless keyboard and mouse combo works fine. I just have to use an alternate keyboard to get through the install.

There are no pairing issues with the wireless unit. The Keyboard works flawlessly with Raspian, Ubuntu, Windows and every platform but NOOBS.

[remaker]

I have submitted a NOOBS bug on GITHUB, with no reply.

https://github.com/raspberrypi/noobs/issues/257

I have two corroborating people with the same issue on the same PID/VID, with other OEM repackaged versions of the same unit.

It works on a fully booted Raspian, but not NOOBS.

Happy to provide more details on questions. Also happy to poke around the code. Can I get underneath the NOOBS GUI and look at log messages? Not sure if it is a kernel detection issue or a Window Manager issue.

[adamst85]

I have forked Noobs and added support for as many wireless keyboards as I could find (and also added the PS3 controller and Wii mote for good measure . It works on my keyboard but it would be good to get further input from the others here that are having issues.

Fork is here: https://github.com/adamst85/noobs and compiled result is available here: http://www.megafileupload.com/isZr/Noob ... upport.zip

[DougieLawson]

If you're going to re-write parts of NOOBS can you add a couple of missing features?

1. Add a GUI driven dialog to force a fsck -f -y against any filesystem found on the card (except the mounted NOOBS root)
2. Add a GUI driven dialog to allow a user to reset the password for pi

Thanks.

[rpdom]

If you're going to re-write parts of NOOBS can you add a couple of missing features?

1. Add a GUI driven dialog to force a fsck -f -y against any filesystem found on the card (except the mounted NOOBS root)
2. Add a GUI driven dialog to allow a user to reset the password for pi

Thanks.

3. Add a GUI driven dialog to backup/restore the current SD card to/from another card in a USB reader. (resizing to fit if possible).

[DirkS]

If you're going to re-write parts of NOOBS can you add a couple of missing features?

1. Add a GUI driven dialog to force a fsck -f -y against any filesystem found on the card (except the mounted NOOBS root)
2. Add a GUI driven dialog to allow a user to reset the password for pi

Thanks.

3. Add a GUI driven dialog to backup/restore the current SD card to/from another card in a USB reader. (resizing to fit if possible).

4. Add a GUI driven dialog to create a 'single OS' copy of one of the installed OSs on an SD card in a USB reader (resizing if possible)

[DougieLawson]

5. Add WiFi drivers for the common Realtek, Ralink and Broadcom ("official") WiFi dongles so most folks can install alternative OS's without needing a wired connection.

6. Add some code to write the WiFi credentials (psk/SSID) to /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf from NOOBS, so that the WiFi connects automagically when the installed OS boots. [You've already got those credentials if you implement #5.]

7. Add a NOOBS updater, so that the funky bootcode.bin, recovery.cmdline, etc. used by NOOBS can be updated without doing strange dances.

[procount]

@DougieLawson

Add a GUI driven dialog to allow a user to reset the password for pi

Do you mean just to replace the entry for user PI in passwd / shadow so that the password is reset to the default again?
What if the user deleted the Pi username, should it be added back again?
Or what if they changed the Pi username to something else (same userID) - does that need any special handling?

[DougieLawson]

I mean accept a fresh password from a non-display GUI box, accept & compare a second copy (you could even include a password strength meter). Rewrite /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow as needed to make the pi userid work with a known password.

If you don't find pi as uid=1000, gid=1000 then you'll need to come back and interact with the PINN user to ask what they want. Most users that aren't for systems tasks like www-data will have a uid/gid >= 1000.

[procount]

@Dougie
I'm testing this new feature out on Arch, since that just happens to be installed at the moment.
I used chpasswd from PINN to change the password for the 'alarm' user in the Arch partition.
Then I rebooted into Arch and was able to login with the new password.
HOWEVER, the password was expired and I was forced to enter a new one.
Is this to be expected?
How can I stop it from expiring?
Is it a feature of Arch?

[procount]

I figured out how to resolve the password expiry.
Does this look ok?

[DougieLawson]

That's just the sort of idea. Password strength will be an output only field.

[procount]

Yes, agreed about strength being output only. Currently it is 5 text values from Very weak to very strong.
The 2nd password is coloured red until it matches the 1st password.

The original default username/passwords are stored in the descriptive support files for each NOOBS OS, so I could initialise this dialog with those default values, or should I leave the password blank?
I was wondering about making username editable so you can change the password of any existing username. I'll probably do that as it makes it more flexible.

[DougieLawson]

If you're going to pre-initialise anything it's got to be user: pi & password: raspberry and you'll have to tell folks you've set that default, exceedingly weak password. That could be done with a

Code: Select all

[ ] set default password

check box.

[procount]

@DougieLawson - PINN updated to v1.9.2 to include the password resetter/changer. Hopefully it meets with your expectations
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