Zorin OS core on surface 8 pro: Keyboard not working to decrypt disk

[limr]

Hi There,

after following the guide on Set Up Microsoft Surface Device - Zorin Help I managed to use zorin on the surface 8 pro. During installation i decided to encrypt the disk and do create a lvm (using the wizard).

Following the above guide i encounter an error on step
4: ```
sudo systemctl enable iptsd

stating 
Failed to enable unit: Unit file iptsd.service does not exist.

Nevertheless, I can use both touchscreen an attached keyboard (including touchpad plus pen). uname -a tells me that the surface kernel is installed: 
Linux sofia-Surface-Pro-8 6.9.3-surface-2 #2 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Mon Jun 10 23:37:21 UTC 2024 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
 
BUT if i restart the surface i cannot enter the decryption key without using an external keybaord connected over USB. While starting the keyboard icon appears in the lower right corner, touching it activates the on-screen-keys, but they disappear, when the decryption key is to be entered.

During startup there is a message stating that "Volume group `vgzorin` not found" followed by "Cannot process volume group vgzorin". Looking at the drives, the only encrypted drive is partition 3 containing root system. EFi/boot and swap are not encrypted, as far as i understand.

I tried to reinstall iptsd, it works with no errors, but still is an unknown service when i try to enable it.

Could you please give me a hint how to proceed? ANy help is much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

limr

[zenzen]

I don't have a Microsoft Surface to try this on, but based on this page you can try to create the service unit file manually.

Create a new file and save it at /lib/systemd/system/iptsd.service (the last segment is the name of the file, the rest is the location in the filesystem) with the following contents:

[Unit]
Description=Intel Precise Touch & Stylus Daemon
Documentation=https://github.com/linux-surface/iptsd

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/iptsd

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

It would be good to know if you could report back whether this works or not, as the IPTSD project page states:

Important: Support on Debian based distributions only goes back to Debian 11 / Ubuntu 22.04.

Zorin OS is based on Ubuntu 22.04. However, it uses a higher kernel version than which may be breaking the compatibility.

You can try using a lower version of the package but figuring out which one to install involves a tedious trial and error process, and even so there are no guarantees. I would start with a package version prior to or around April, 2022.

Another option is to compile from source the new version of the package yourself. Some people have reported partial success with this approach.