Introduction

This new release, Canoeboot 20231101, released today 1 November 2023, is based on the Libreboot 20231101 release, porting changes in it on top of Canoeboot 20231026 as a base. The previous release was Canoeboot 20231026, released on 26 October 2023.

Canoeboot provides boot firmware for supported x86/ARM machines, starting a bootloader that then loads your operating system. It replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware on x86 machines, and provides an improved configuration on ARM-based chromebooks supported (U-Boot bootloader, instead of Google's depthcharge bootloader). On x86 machines, the GRUB and SeaBIOS coreboot payloads are officially supported, provided in varying configurations per machine. It provides an automated build system for the configuration and installation of coreboot ROM images, making coreboot easier to use for non-technical people. You can find the list of supported hardware in Canoeboot documentation.

Canoeboot's main benefit is higher boot speed, better security and more customisation options compared to most proprietary firmware. As a libre software project, the code can be audited, and coreboot does regularly audit code. The other main benefit is freedom to study, adapt and share the code, a freedom denied by most boot firmware, but not Canoeboot! Booting Linux/BSD is also well supported.

Canoeboot is maintained in parallel with Libreboot, and by the same developer, Leah Rowe, who maintains both projects; Canoeboot implements the GNU Free System Distribution Guideline as policy, whereas Libreboot implements its own Binary Blob Reduction Policy.

Work done since last release

This changelog is based on the Libreboot 20231101 changelog; changes from Libreboot 20231101 that are suitable for Canoeboot have been included in this release, and so, this changelog has been modified (based on the Libreboot one):

Coreboot, GRUB, U-Boot and SeaBIOS revisions

Canoeboot 20231026 and 20231101 are both based on these revisions:

Coreboot (default): commit ID d862695f5f432b5c78dada5f16c293a4c3f9fce6, 12 October 2023
Coreboot (fam15h_udimm): commit ID 1c13f8d85c7306213cd525308ee8973e5663a3f8, 16 June 2021
GRUB: commit ID e58b870ff926415e23fc386af41ff81b2f588763, 3 October 2023
SeaBIOS: commit ID 1e1da7a963007d03a4e0e9a9e0ff17990bb1608d, 24 August 2023
U-Boot: commit ID 4459ed60cb1e0562bc5b40405e2b4b9bbf766d57, 2 October 2023

However, Canoeboot 20231101 has added several new patches on top of several of these, that fix certain bugs or improve certain functionalities. More information is available elsewhere in this page.

Build system tweaks

These changes were made:

i945 bootblock copy: during ROM building, the bootblock must be copied from the main 64KB block, to the backup block, for use with bucts, but this wasn't done in the last release; this regression has now been fixed.
Re-add SeaGRUB support - enabled on Dell Latitude E6400.
Export LC_COLLATE and LC_ALL, setting it to C, to ensure consistent sorting; the Canoeboot build system heavily relies on sorting by alphanumerical order with numbers and capital letters first, e.g. when applying patches.
GRUB config: Re-wrote the text on some entries to make them easier to understand for novice users.
GRUB: Don't spew the "Unknown key" message on unknown/invalid key presses - otherwise, a faulty keyboard with stuck keys will make the message spew repeatedly, making GRUB unusable.
Revert a heapsize patch in coreboot that broke S3 suspend/resume in some boards - if you do have issues, please send a bug report.
Dell Latitude E6400: fixed keyboard initialisation in GRUB. GRUB was using scancode set 2 without translation. The EC on Dell Latitude E6400 allows to set the scancodes and reports back what you set, but only ever actually uses scancode set 1 (XT) - so, the fix makes GRUB always use set 2 with translation (treated as 1). This is the same behaviour used in SeaBIOS. This fixes the machine in GRUB, and doesn't break other boards as per testing.
Fix coldboot on Dell Latitude E6400, courtesy of a patch by Angel Pons (IRC inick hell on coreboot IRC) - previously, this machine booted unreliably, though reboot was fine. Angel wrote a patch for another board, that also works on the E6400 quite nicely.
QEMU ARM64: video console now enabled in U-Boot (courtesy Alper Nebi Yasak)
Dependencies scripts: updated a few of them, for newer versions of distros.

This is only about 1 week's worth of changes; this Canoeboot release is largely a bugfix release.

Hardware supported in this release

All of the following are believed to boot, but if you have any issues, please contact the Canoeboot project. They are:

Servers (AMD, x86)

Desktops (AMD, Intel, x86)

Laptops (Intel, x86)

Dell Latitude E6400 (easy to flash, no disassembly, similar hardware to X200/T400)
ThinkPad X60 / X60S / X60 Tablet
ThinkPad T60 (with Intel GPU)
Lenovo ThinkPad X200 / X200S / X200 Tablet
Lenovo ThinkPad X301
Lenovo ThinkPad R400
Lenovo ThinkPad T400 / T400S
Lenovo ThinkPad T500
Lenovo ThinkPad W500
Lenovo ThinkPad R500
Apple MacBook1,1 and MacBook2,1

Laptops (ARM, with U-Boot payload)

Downloads

You can find this release on the downloads page. At the time of this announcement, some of the rsync mirrors may not have it yet, so please check another one if your favourite one doesn't have it.

Post-release errata

The following binary blobs were overlooked, and are still present in the release archive for Canoeboot 20231101 and 20231026; this mistake was corrected, in the Canoeboot 20231103 release, so you should use that if you don't want these files. They are, thus:

src/coreboot/default/3rdparty/stm/Test/FrmPkg/Core/Init/Dmar.h
src/coreboot/fam15h_rdimm/src/vendorcode/intel/fsp1_0/baytrail/absf/minnowmax_1gb.absf
src/coreboot/fam15h_rdimm/src/vendorcode/intel/fsp1_0/baytrail/absf/minnowmax_2gb.absf
src/coreboot/fam15h_udimm/src/vendorcode/intel/fsp1_0/baytrail/absf/minnowmax_1gb.absf
src/coreboot/fam15h_udimm/src/vendorcode/intel/fsp1_0/baytrail/absf/minnowmax_2gb.absf
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/ble.h
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/ble_err.h
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/ble_gap.h
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/ble_gatt.h
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/ble_gattc.h
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/ble_gatts.h
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/ble_hci.h
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/ble_l2cap.h
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/ble_ranges.h
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/ble_types.h
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/nrf_error.h
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/nrf_error_sdm.h
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/nrf_error_soc.h
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/nrf_nvic.h
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/nrf_sdm.h
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/nrf_soc.h
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/nrf_svc.h
src/pico-sdk/lib/tinyusb/hw/mcu/nordic/nrf5x/s140_nrf52_6.1.1_API/include/nrf52/nrf_mbr.h

Thanks go to Craig Topham, who is the Copyright and Licensing Associate at the Free Software Foundation; you can find his entry on the FSF staff page. Craig is the one who reported these.

The Canoeboot 20231026 and 20231101 release tarballs will not be altered, but errata has now been added to the announcement pages for those releases, to let people know of the above issue.

You are advised, therefore, to use the Canoeboot 20231103 release.

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