4 ms·

This article doesn't seem to explain why they have a hard dependency on a proprietary tool to flash the firmware. There are no alternatives to AFUEFI?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
emeraldd 8y ago
Based on there comments in the article, I'd say that was their conclusion: There is no other way to interpret this email other than LVFS won’t work well for us. UpdateCapsule is not supported by over a decade of machines in the field and could not be added without a firmware update.
- majewsky 8y ago
  Please don't use code blocks for quotes. This is truncated and unreadable on mobile. Just use a normal paragraph with a ">" prefix.
jackpot51 8y ago
I am the engineer at System76 that has been working on the low-level firmware update procedure. The only alternative is to reverse engineer the SPI flashing method. We have switched to using FPT, the Intel Flash Programming tool, on new models. This means that we need to reverse engineer the SPI update method, which is something the flashrom project has had success in doing for older Intel chipsets.
- patrickg_zill 8y ago
  SPI is a standard, right? What is the problem in using SPI?
  - jackpot51 8y ago
    SPI is easy, and well understood. For firmware editing I often use an external flasher for updating the ROM, and use flashrom to do so. Accessing the SPI bus on the Intel chipset, from the computer itself, is undocumented and usually requires reverse engineering.
    - monocasa 8y ago
      Which chipset? It was documented (albeit not super well) in the handful of Intel chipsets I've had to support for firmware updates.
      - jackpot51 8y ago
        Kaby Lake and Kaby Lake R, for example
        monocasa 8y ago
        OK, neat, it looks like they haven't changed it in eons. It's PCI device 00:1f.5 and is documented in all of the PCH docs (so Vol 1 for overview, Vol 2 for registers). Sometimes it's disabled by firmware as a sort of 'security' mechanism. Yeah, there's not a whole lot there in the docs, but it's PIO SPI that handles most of the flash addressing for you, so it's not the most complex thing in the world to begin with. More "fill the buffer and go" sort of deal.
        amluto 8y ago
        But, if your firmware cares about preventing flashable rootkits, then these registers should be locked such that you can only flash from SMM or during initial boot. The fact that AFUEFI works at all on a System76 laptop is a bad sign IMO.
        jackpot51 8y ago
        It absolutely is locked, and needs to be unlocked and flashed while in EFI mode.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- amluto 8y ago
  Can’t you add a bit of code to your firmware to accept a special EFI capsule that’s really just an EFI program (or a firmware volume containing an AFUEFI and the payload)? This wouldn’t work for UpdateCapsule, but it should work as a UEFI 2.4+ capsule-on-disk. If fwupd won’t support a capsule-on-disk, I personally volunteer to nudge them. But I bet they already support it or would be very willing to add support.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

emeraldd 8y ago

Based on there comments in the article, I'd say that was their conclusion: There is no other way to interpret this email other than LVFS won’t work well for us. UpdateCapsule is not supported by over a decade of machines in the field and could not be added without a firmware update.

majewsky 8y ago
Please don't use code blocks for quotes. This is truncated and unreadable on mobile. Just use a normal paragraph with a ">" prefix.

jackpot51 8y ago

I am the engineer at System76 that has been working on the low-level firmware update procedure. The only alternative is to reverse engineer the SPI flashing method. We have switched to using FPT, the Intel Flash Programming tool, on new models. This means that we need to reverse engineer the SPI update method, which is something the flashrom project has had success in doing for older Intel chipsets.

patrickg_zill 8y ago
SPI is a standard, right? What is the problem in using SPI?
- jackpot51 8y ago
  SPI is easy, and well understood. For firmware editing I often use an external flasher for updating the ROM, and use flashrom to do so. Accessing the SPI bus on the Intel chipset, from the computer itself, is undocumented and usually requires reverse engineering.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    Which chipset? It was documented (albeit not super well) in the handful of Intel chipsets I've had to support for firmware updates.
    - jackpot51 8y ago
      Kaby Lake and Kaby Lake R, for example
      - monocasa 8y ago
        OK, neat, it looks like they haven't changed it in eons. It's PCI device 00:1f.5 and is documented in all of the PCH docs (so Vol 1 for overview, Vol 2 for registers). Sometimes it's disabled by firmware as a sort of 'security' mechanism. Yeah, there's not a whole lot there in the docs, but it's PIO SPI that handles most of the flash addressing for you, so it's not the most complex thing in the world to begin with. More "fill the buffer and go" sort of deal.
        amluto 8y ago
        But, if your firmware cares about preventing flashable rootkits, then these registers should be locked such that you can only flash from SMM or during initial boot. The fact that AFUEFI works at all on a System76 laptop is a bad sign IMO.
        jackpot51 8y ago
        It absolutely is locked, and needs to be unlocked and flashed while in EFI mode.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
amluto 8y ago
Can’t you add a bit of code to your firmware to accept a special EFI capsule that’s really just an EFI program (or a firmware volume containing an AFUEFI and the payload)? This wouldn’t work for UpdateCapsule, but it should work as a UEFI 2.4+ capsule-on-disk. If fwupd won’t support a capsule-on-disk, I personally volunteer to nudge them. But I bet they already support it or would be very willing to add support.