2025-12-13 MNT Pocket Reform notes
==================================

> As is often the case, I sit on a cushion in the living room, typing
> into the MNT Pocket Reform laptop while Claudia is lying on the
> sofa, reading a magazine.

After a recent upgrade, poweroff, shutdown and friends stopped doing
their job. The system starts shutting down; only the keyboard lights
are still on, then nothing happens for a few seconds and then the
Pocket Reform reboots again.

I posted on the community forums, asking for help, and josch came to
the rescue once again. The key to finding the problem is running
reform-check.

Here's his breakdown:

    E: Cannot get version of linux-image-mnt-reform-arm64 as it is not installed

> Without having that meta-package installed, it will be more tricky
> to keep your kernel up-to-date.

    W: unable to obtain version of system controller firmware -- firmware too old?
    W: unable to obtain version of keyboard firmware -- firmware too old?

> You should look into upgrading your sysctl and keyboard firmware.
> The versions after the one you have (too old to retrieve the exact
> version) contain important fixes for the stability of
> keyboard/sysctl communication.

    E: linux-headers-mnt-reform-arm64 is not installed -- cannot compile reform2_lpc module

This is why you cannot shut-down properly. Without the reform2_lpc
module, the system cannot tell your Pocket to switch off.

    E: reform2_lpc is not loaded (battery status information will be missing)
    E: /usr/lib/modules/6.17.11-mnt-reform-arm64/updates/dkms/reform2_lpc.ko{.xz} does not exist

> More errors because the module cannot be compiled above.

I installed linux-image-mnt-reform-arm64 and
linux-headers-mnt-reform-arm64 but the reform2_lpc is still
uncompiled.

I’m not sure how to do this but guessed that sudo dpkg-reconfigure
reform2-lpc-dkms was the command I needed. To load it, sudo modprobe
reform2-lpc … and now shutdown works! 😍

I found information about the dynamic kernel module system (dkms) on
this very blog. Sometimes it is amazing. And then I searched for an
appropriate package.

As for the firmware, josch said:

> Since your firmware is too old to be updated via fwupd, you need to
> do it manually once: How to Update your MNT Pocket Reform Firmware.
> After you are on that firmware version, you can use gnome-firmware
> (the GUI way) or fwupd (the console way) to update to the latest
> version.

Thanks, josch!

#Pocket #Reform