Installing Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to Wyse Z90D7 Windows Terminal

I recently posted how to update Wyze Z90D7 to latest available Windows firmware. Which is far from usable. Let's see how Ubuntu works on this hardware. Actual flavour I picked is Lubuntu, but hardware support should be same for all.

TL;DR: What a piece of shit this is, don't waste your time just toss it to bin already.
First you MUST update BIOS to version 3.0E. At least some of older versions have bug that corrupt contents of BIOS chip requiring taking functional BIOS chip from another identical Z90D7 and bunch of hot-swap trickery to recover device. Simply booting Lubuntu 14.04.2 x64 live mode will corrupt it resulting blinking amber/orange led and nothing else after next power cycle.

Upgrade to BIOS 3.0E by downloading firmware tool and upgrade package. Create bootable USB stick that only contains BIOS and CMOS so make sure you unselect OS image. Boot your Wyse Z-Class from this stick to update bios. This must be biggest BIOS update in the world being nearly 6 gigabytes. Of course you only need few megabytes of it, but it's only available as part of that huge bundle.

Now we can proceed with Lubuntu install.

Download lubuntu-14.04.2-desktop-amd64.iso
Download Rufus
Create bootable USB stick from ISO image using Rufus. Default settings are ok.

Next connect USB stick to Z90D7 and power it on while repeatedly pressing DEL to enter setup. Default BIOS password is "Fireport".
- Change SATA mode to AHCI
- Check that Frame Buffer Size is set to Auto
- Enable Boot From USB
- Enable ACPI P-states
- Remove BIOS password
- Exit and save changes

Boot and press "P" to enter boot menu. Select USB HDD as boot source.
Select "Try Lubuntu without Installing" to start it in live-cd mode.
Make sure you have wired network cable connected, DHCP server is available on network and there's working Internet connection.

Since this device has only 4GB SSD we need few extra steps while installing. If you have version with bigger storage or are installing to USB3 stick you can skip these steps and just do regular Ubuntu install.

 - After system has booted in live-cd mode open shell by clicking on start menu, Accessories and LXTerminal.
 - Switch to root
  sudo su -
 - Bypass disk size check
  cd /usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity
  sed -i -e's/min_disk_size = size.*/min_disk_size = 1/g' misc.py
 - Install btrfs-tools package (bug 1347345)
  apt-get -y install btrfs-tools
 - Close terminal window and click Install icon on desktop

Since we have so little storage we can't spend half of it as swap. When installer asks about partitions select "Something else" to manually partition disk. Click "New Partition Table" to wipe existing partitions and then create single /-partition using BTRFS as filesystem. Ignore warning about missing swap partition.

As harware is bit on slow side it'll take a while to install Lubuntu. Eventually it'll prompt for reboot and land on login screen booted from internal SSD. Don't be alarmed by black screen, for some reason boot process is really, really silent.

After login we can see that install consumed 2,7GiB of our 3,9GiB SSD. Now you may be wondering why we picked BTRFS instead of traditional EXT4? Answer is we're going to enable compression to gain some extra space.

Open LXTerminal.
 - Switch to root
  sudo su -
 - Install btrfs-tools again which are still missing due bug
  apt-get update
  apt-get -y install btrfs-tools
 - Enable lzo compression on both / and /home partitions by editing /etc/fstab
  sed -i.bak -e's|,subvol|,compress=lzo,subvol|g' /etc/fstab
 - Remount / and /home
  mount / -o remount,compress=lzo
  mount /home -o remount,compress=lzo
 - Compress all existing files on / and /home, this will take some time but saves 0,8GB
  find / /home -xdev -type f -or -type d -exec btrfs filesystem defragment -v -clzo -- {} +
 - Install zram to compensate lack of swap
  apt-get -y install zram
 - Apply latest updates available
  apt-get -y dist-upgrade
 - Free some space by wiping apt cache and then reboot 
  rm -rf /var/cache/apt/*
  reboot

If you really insist on having fileswap over btrfs you can try adding these lines to /etc/rc.local and also enable zswap. Not recommended.
  rm -f /fileswap
  touch /fileswap
  chmod 0600 /fileswap
  chattr -c +C /fileswap
  dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=512 >/fileswap
  losetup /dev/loop5 /fileswap
  mkswap /dev/loop5
  swapon /dev/loop5


But is Linux any more useful on this device than Windows 7 was? Not really. It's still too slow to run even browser locally with more than one tab open. You can of course use it as terminal - as it's intended. Too bad there's only hacked up versions of Citrix client for Linux and stock Windows distribution lacking updates is way too scary to use for anything.

Entire principle of these thin clients from Wyse, HP, etc. is so silly. Companies are paying 800 euros each for crappy device like Z90D7 that's nothing more than 100 euro HTPC with crippled bios to make it "more terminaly". Then they pay even more for even crappier management tool licenses. Plus don't forget that 100k€ Citrix farm project with licensing nightmares and incompetent consults. In the end you have subpar desktop environment that neither users nor admins are happy with. Finally you realize that investment made on thin clients that was supposed to last for next 10 years is worthless under 3 years because embedded display adapters is so weak it can't support requirements of all those flashy websites your users are trying to use.

OpenElec / Kodibuntu or guiless linux like ubuntu-server seems to work fine. That's probably best use you can find for these devices. I still need to check if there's digital audio coming out on DisplayPort as that's obviously requirement for HTPC use.

P.S. If you're having problems booting from USB use Rufus and select "MBR partition scheme for UEFI" instead of default "MBR partition scheme for BIOS or UEFI". You may also need to tweak boot order in bios to ensure device really boots from USB. Selecting USB from boot menu after pressing P is sometimes ignored. You might also randomly get BIOS or UEFI mode boot from USB. Using larger USB stick can also sometimes help, for example I had issues with 2GB but 16GB worked ok.


Comments

  1. I appreciate that this article is a few years old now but I've got a Z90D7 from eBay and I've upgraded the hardware to include an extra 4GB RAM (8GB in total) and a 500GB SSD in place of the default flash drive. I'm attempting to install Ubuntu but failing miserable - the main problem is when it comes to configure `grub2`. The system is never able to boot from the SSD. Admittedly, I haven't updated the BIOS firmware to V3.0E, do you think this could be the key here? I've also tried older flavours of Ubuntu and although they have different error messages, the end result is still the same - a non-booting system. Thanks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. same here

      i tried some different linux version. i use BIOS 3.0U. The installer will not be able to install GRUB2 (because Bootdevice 000A isnt present). If i use a mirrored system (installed with legacy BIOS not UEFI) it will boot until grub will updated -> it installs UEFI-Grub and no more boot...

      Delete
    2. I have the same problem with the D90D7. Is there any solution?

      Delete
  2. I bought a used Z90D7 with a 2.0 version of BIOS and successfully installed xubuntu 18 on it. The difference is that it had a 60GB SSD onboard, installed by seller, and 4GB RAM. I didn't have any problems with BIOS though.
    Also here's a link to other useful resources on that model https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/wyse/z/z90d7/firmware.shtml

    ReplyDelete
  3. If possible could you please update the links to Dell with their new location under: https://downloads.dell.com/wyse/
    It is not clear where to get the firmware and upgrade from this ftp site. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hello, unfortunately I have not read this forum prior trying to install win10 on this Z90D7. i upgraded ram with two more gigs of ram and put 120Gb ssd in place of an old 16gb flash dom. It booted right away from usb stick and started loading installation files, but reported some memory error, I have restarted it and now I only get amber - yellow LED flashing all the time. Is there any chance to recover this thin client or should I toss it in trash.

    Thanks
    Voislav

    ReplyDelete

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