Ubuntu 17.10 Temporarily Pulled Due To A BIOS Corrupting Problem

[Guest]

You're full of shit. The link talks about how to fix a BIOS corruption using Windows 10. Not that some bug in Windows 10 caused the BIOS corruption. This is straight out FUD against Windows.

You made my day. It's MS which spreads FUD about Linux. The only thing you were right is I gave incorrect link. When comes to Windows it can burn in hell together with uefi. It's shit OS and it's shit bios replacement.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...03dec2c?auth=1

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-hardware-winpc/windows-10-killed-my-motherboard/cfac45d9-9e5d-4eb9-9c27-0f64093f75b3?auth=1

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-update/windows-10-corrupted-bios/ab30a728-7e0e-487d-a1f1-f401cf00fbd7

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_install/windows-10-update-resulted-in-corrupt-bios/c5dad174-e4c7-4cf6-94ff-6d82b03dec2c?auth=1

[aht0]

Your first and last links are identical

You can quite easily brick motherboard or peripheral from windows, correct. Most applications for hardware firmware upgrade are after all coded to run on DOS or windows.

You could also have "firmware upgrade" during Windows update, but if anything changes in the system environment during fw upgrade - poof, error. Often recoverable though.

[deepclutch]

Dell and HP also uses Insyde BIOS/UEFI. So far, no report in launchpad bts from users with hardware from said manufacturers.

[aht0]

The documentation mentions the possibility of using DediProg equipment to recover from issues like this one (DediProg is an IC programmer that costs over $200), but that seems a rather complex solution, especially since many motherboards are actually cheaper.

There are also people who already possess IC programmers (electronic engineers, tinkerers, repair specialist etc) and could do it if you just pay them for expenses and effort.

[leipero]

What people are missing out is that this should not happen under any circumstances. If (U)EFI have some sort of implementation to modify what is supposed to be ROM as far as OS is concerned, than it should be implemented in a way that can't influence/corrupt memory itself. This is clearly a fault of manufacturers/UEFI vendors, not OS, no matter how driver might be flawed/bad, it should not influence hardware level operation software.

Immagine one day you get GPU BIOS corrupted by driver (maybe it did happen, I don't know)? But you wouldn't fault driver for it, it is clearly a fault of BIOS vendor.

I think even mechanism that modify boot values/order from the OS (via efibootmgr) is limited to that list only, so you can delete, edit or modify values of the boot order without fear of corrupting UEFI itself.

[HankB]

Data point: I have a Lenovo Y50-70 and installed Ubuntu 17.10 a couple months ago. I normally don't use Ubuntu on desktops. Debian is my daily driver. But I like to distro-hop. A few days ago I tried to boot from USB and could not do so. Yesterday I found this and now I know why.

Additional information: I can 'dual boot' Windows 10, Debian Stretch, Ubuntu 17.10 and Kali. I haven't tried Kali recently but the other three still boot and upgrade. I select Linux distros using Grub but to boot Windows I have to use the BIOS boot device selector and select Windows there. My Linux partitions boot via Legacy mode and I think that Win10 uses UEFI.

My Y50 is not bricked. I simply can't boot from USB. This is annoying because from time to time I like to boot a live distro and capture a full image backup of the system drive when it is not mounted. If I screw something up badly enough, it is quicker to reload a whole disk image than to install Windows and go through multiple reboot/upgrade cycles to bring it up to date. The only way to do that now is to remove the drive and make a copy on another host. I can also install Linux by putting the drive in another PC. I don't think that will work as well with Windows.

The result is that the Y50 is only slightly crippled but still usable. I would like to see a fix for this but I'm not interested in spending much on a laptop I'd rather replace (for other reasons.)

[HankB]

Affected Lenovo Y50-70

hbarta@yggdrasil:~$ sudo dmidecode|head -n 37
[sudo] password for hbarta:
# dmidecode 3.0
Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.
SMBIOS 2.7 present.
68 structures occupying 2889 bytes.
Table at 0x000E6D90.

Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 24 bytes
BIOS Information
Vendor: LENOVO
Version: 9ECN43WW(V3.03)
Release Date: 08/12/2015
Address: 0xE0000
Runtime Size: 128 kB
ROM Size: 6656 kB
Characteristics:
PCI is supported
BIOS is upgradeable
BIOS shadowing is allowed
Boot from CD is supported
Selectable boot is supported
EDD is supported
Japanese floppy for NEC 9800 1.2 MB is supported (int 13h)
Japanese floppy for Toshiba 1.2 MB is supported (int 13h)
5.25"/360 kB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
5.25"/1.2 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
3.5"/720 kB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
3.5"/2.88 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
8042 keyboard services are supported (int 9h)
CGA/mono video services are supported (int 10h)
ACPI is supported
USB legacy is supported
BIOS boot specification is supported
Targeted content distribution is supported
UEFI is supported
BIOS Revision: 3.43
Firmware Revision: 3.43

hbarta@yggdrasil:~$

[Unklejoe]

Just figured I’d throw this out there:

For those who have been affected by this, you might be able to reprogram your SPI chip with an Arduino and some micro IC clamps/test clips. It’s a lot cheaper than a $200 programmer.

I’ve used an Arduino to program an 8 pin DIP chip before (on a breadboard). It might be a pain to attach the clips to a surface mount part, but it should be possible as long as the chip has actual leads.

Do a search for “serprog Arduino” and you’ll find many articles explaining the procedure.

[bmullan]

This is a Lenovo bug and its affecting all Linux distro'sl...

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-P-Y-and-Z-series/Y50-70-BIOS-Can-t-Save-Settings-Or-Exit/m-p/3853208#M157885

[aht0]

You might want to crucify me for this opinion but..
First, Lenovo does not support officially nothing but Windows on their machines. Windows does not have that BIOS corruption issue. They do have a web page with a list of laptops and Linux distros known to work on those laptops but it's not particularly contemporary. It's a Linux related issue - which you installed at your own choice and nobody forced you. Nobody AFAIK is also taking responsibility for Intel SPI driver.

As I see it, half the guilt lies with users themselves, using non-supported software on a OEM hardware. It's pretty pathetic trying to accuse Lenovo for this particular problem and not look into mirror at all. Yeah, you did not know something like this could happen? So what? Most free software is like this - install, but risk is yours - there is no guarantee it does not break something.

If Lenovo does not support in official capacity, it has no obligation whatsoever insuring that it's hardware interacts with Linux properly. It's Linux dev's, distributor or driver maintainer problem, nothing else. Especially because this Intel SPI driver wasn't even fully ready/completed but typical half-assed rush-in that now really did bite the users ass. You can't even accuse Intel because changes in the driver causing problems were non-Intel in origin.