Hello,
I received a Librem Mini V2 in December 2023 and have the same issues as @howil with USB devices. If I plug in USB flash drives or harddrives when the system is running they are usually not recognized, or they are recognized and not accessible. Sometimes they are accessible, but attempting to read or write to them will throw various I/O errors. Others will show as repeatedly disconnecting/reconnecting to the system. Two of my USB harddrives actually crash the entire system to black screen/power off when I plug them in. When this happens the system will not boot again until I unplug the power supply and replug it. I also get this same behavior if I shutdown the system normally through the OS and leave the power supply connected and drives plugged in. When I go to start the system the next day it will not boot. The white power LED comes on but the display just stays on a black screen. I have to unplug and replug the power supply to boot.
I have been able to work around this issue by doing a cold boot: plugging in my USB drives first, then plugging in the power supply, then starting the system. The drives are recognized and operate normally as long as they were plugged in before connecting power and booting. So the issue seems to be exclusively with hotplugging and “warm boot”.
My system came with Pureboot. I forgot to check which version, but I assume Release 25. Today I updated to Release 29 successfully, but I still had the same USB issues. I then did a downgrade to SeaBIOS 4.18-Purism-1 per your post. However, I still have the same USB issues with this version. I then attempted to flash your second preview build from [this thread] but flashrom gave me an error “Unable to access firmware flash. Add iomem=relaxed to kernel command line and try again.”. I tried again with your first build, but that one got stuck on “Initializing internal programmer” for over an hour, so I stopped it. Luckily it did not brick my system, but I am afraid to attempt any more flashes now.
I am running Qubes 4.2.1 currently (which uses fedora-39 for sys-usb), but have also tested Fedora 34 live, and Fedora 39 and Windows 10 22H2 installed directly to NVME. All four OS have the same issues. They all crash to black screen when I plug in the USB harddrives. Windows device manager show the drives disconnecting/reconnecting for the Kingston, and the others are listed in disk management, but throw I/O errors. I was flashing coreboot updates using Fedora 39.
Non-working Devices:
- Kingston Datatraveler USB 2.0 8GB flash drive - repeated disconnect/reconnects in all ports
- ADATA S102 USB 3.0 32GB flash drive - inaccessible or throws I/O errors
- Sandisk Cruzer Glide USB 3.0 32GB flash drive - inaccessible or throws I/O errors
- Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB USB 3.0 2.5" Harddrive (bus powered) - crashes entire system to power off when plugged into any USB port (haven’t tested Type-C)
- IOCrest 2.5" USB 3.0 to SATA hard drive external enclosure (bus powered) - same as Seagate. Currently has a 1TB Toshiba 7200 RPM drive in it.
- IcyDock 4 bay USB 3.0 to SATA external drive enclosure w/UASP - inaccessible or throws I/O errors
- USB audio DAC amp combo Nuforce icon (has external power supply) - crackling and popping noises through headphones. Seems to operate normally on cold boots.
All these devices operate normally on my other computers running Qubes, Fedora or Windows.
Working Devices:
- USB mice - Zowie ZA11
- USB keyboard - generic Sonix. Usually works ok, but sometimes will activate sticky keys for no reason or a key gets stuck as activated (i.e. down arrow which will scroll web pages indefinitely). This is a new keyboard so keys shouldn’t be sticking.
Ports:
- all ports have the same issues. The front two USB 2.0 (black) seem to be the worst.
I also found [this thread] where a user reports the same issue with USB audio crackling, Sticky keys being activated on the keyboard and flash drives not being recognized. And [another one] on sticky keys.