Steven Chamberlain:
> I'd love to try Libreboot/Coreboot but I don't own the equipment to
> re-flash my own BIOS chip (on a ThinkPad X200). So I wondered, might
> someone be able to bring with them a Beaglebone Black and Pomona 5250/
> 5252 clamps, to DebCamp/Conf?
I own a RaspPi2, SOIC8 and SOIC16 clips and a bunch of cables and I
already had in mind to come with them to CCCamp and DebConf.
I have successfully flashed several X201 already with the SOIC8 with
coreboot. Unfortunately, I have since reverted them to the original
firmware since there was a reproducible bug which makes the computer
shut down when getting out of suspend-to-ram. I've lacked proper
hardware, time and surely some knowledge to solve this. Last attempt was
a little more than a month ago.
Flashing is quite painless, although a bit impressive for outsiders.
> I thought it could make for a nice workshop activity. Some people at
> the conference will have expert knowledge of this and be able to help
> others through the process. I guess there are risks though:
>
> * if something goes badly wrong, someone's device may be bricked,
> leaving them scr^Wrather unproductive for the rest of DebConf
> (maybe it should be on the final day?);
Something would has to go as wrong as in “burn electronics”. The
operation always start by making sure the vendor firmware is readable
and that it reads the same multiple times. Because it's external
flashing, you can always re-flash it later if coreboot/libreboot has
problems.
> * if the BBB is tampered with, it could flash malware to everyone's
> devices (but I think we can mitigate that by bringing our own
> micro-SD cards, download and verify the ROM ourselves, or even
> use a second BBB to independently verify what was flashed?).
You would build coreboot yourself and then proceed to the flashing.
Once coreboot has been flashed once, you can reflash again using
flashrom in the live system. In doubt, you could use another external
flasher to make sure that the same bits have been written than the one
you wantedd.
Also, thanks to efforts from Holger and members of the coreboot team,
coreboot now builds reproducibly on X200 and X201:
https://reproducible.debian.net/coreboot/coreboot.html
--
Jérémy Bobbio .''`.
jeremy.bobbio@irq7.fr : : : lunar@debian.org
`. `'` lunar@torproject.org
`-
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