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% Libreboot 20230413 released! % Leah Rowe % 13 April 2023

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE INSTALLING: Safety issues updating Libreboot on Sandybridge/Ivybridge/Haswell

Introduction

Libreboot 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 the Libreboot documentation.

The last Libreboot release, version 20230319, was released on 19 March in 2023. This new release, Libreboot 20230413, is released today on April 13th, 2023.

This is marked as a testing release, though it is basically stable. It is a bugfix release, relative to Libreboot 20230319. In addition to this, massive code cleanup has been performed on parts of the build system.

The priority of this release has been build system fixes/improvements. For the time being, no more code changes will be made unless needed, in coreboot, for existing supported hardware; the focus is going to be on adding more boards to Libreboot, to support more hardware. I've been on a spree, buying lots of mainboards that coreboot supports, that would be interesting in Libreboot.

READ THIS BEFORE FLASHING LIBREBOOT, OR YOU MIGHT BRICK YOUR MACHINE

On newer Intel platforms that require Intel ME and/or MRC firmware, such as ThinkPad X230 or T440p, and/or HP laptops that require KBC1126 EC firmware, the release ROMs of Libreboot are MISSING certain files, that you must insert yourself. FAILURE to adhere to this warning may result in you bricking your machine (rendering it unbootable), if you were to flash the release ROMs without modifying them in any way. For more information, please read:

Insert binary blobs on Sandybridge/Ivybridge/Haswell

This isn't required on all Libreboot-supported boards, but if in doubt, follow these instructions anyway. If you run blobutil on a board that doesn't need blobs, nothing will happen.

Build from source

This release was build-tested on Debian Sid, as of 13 April 2023. Your mileage may vary, with other distros. Refer to Libreboot documentation.

KCMA-D8 and KGPE-D16 wanted!

ASUS KGPE-D16 and KCMA-D8 needed for testing!

These boards still haven't made it back to Libreboot, but I wish to re-add them in a future release. If you can give/loan me a fully assembled workstation with one (or both) of these, I would appreciate it. Please get in touch!

Work done since last release

For more detailed change logs, look at the Git repository. This is a summary of changes.

Summary of changes:

Zero code changes within coreboot on any boards, but the build system went through a mild overhaul:

  • Massive code cleanup of util/nvmutil, and improved error handling.
  • Insert scripts for post-release sandybridge/ivybridge/haswell ROMs are now much easier to use, and less error-prone.
  • A few problematic boards, for which ROM images were excluded in the previous release, have now been removed from the Libreboot build system. They will be re-added in a future release, and you can find a list of them in the detailed changelog below.
  • Haswell (T440/W541): mrc.bin insertion is now correct, on the blobutil script. In the previous release, Libreboot's build system inserted this at the wrong location in the ROM, after downloading it; coreboot's own build system does it correctly, and that is used when compiling, but post-release ROM images have it inserted with equivalent logic in the Libreboot build system, instead. - NOTE: libre raminit is also available, if you choose the ROM images with t440p_12mb in the filenames, whereas t440pmrc_12mb images need mrc.bin for raminit. More info about this is in the previous release.

MRC W541/T440p ROM images re-added

As alluded to and applied by the above text, T440p/W541 thinkpad images that use mrc.bin have been re-added. Libreboot supports experimental raminit on these boards, where the MRC file is not required, but it also provides ones that use it, so that users can choose which one they want.

More information this is available, in the previous Libreboot 20230319 release announcement.

Detailed descriptions of changes

Changelog:

  • blobutil/inject: Relative to the fix below (courtesy shmalebx9), the ROM image archives in releases now contain lists of SHA1 hashes, matching what each file should be when running blobutil/inject
  • blobutil/inject: It is now possible to insert MRC and neutered ME images, where required on specific mainboards, into all ROM images of a given tar archive, in addition to single ROM images. The patch for this is courtesy of Caleb La Grange (shmalebx9 on libreboot IRC)
  • Removed daisy/peach chromebooks: The machines are believed to boot properly, with the coreboot and u-boot code being correct, but lbmk currently does not handle the BL1 bootloaders on these machines, and this was overlooked before; the images for these machines have also been deleted, from previous releases. These will be re-added in a future Libreboot release.
  • Removed veyron chromebooks for now: u-boot does not work at all on those boards (video issues), last known revision working on veyron was 2021.01 so a git-bisect can probably done. These boards will be re-added in a future Libreboot release.
  • util/ich9utils: Merged it back into lbmk, rather than keeping it as a separate repository. It is now directly part of the Libreboot build system, once again.
  • util/nvmutil: Major code cleanup; reduced SLOC count to 315 source lines, whereas it was 386 code lines in the previous release. The compiled binary sizes have been reduced by 7%, as tested with TCC on an x86_64 host. This code size reduction is provided, without reducing any functionality.
  • util/nvmutil: Fixed faulty check for MAC address 00:00:00:00:00:00 - the total was being reset for each word, wrongly. This has been corrected.
  • blobutil/download: now supports extracting me.bin from LZMA archives, in addition to inno archives; in practise, lbmk still currently only supports machines where inno archives are extracted from, but experimental new ports exist outside of master that will be present in future releases.
  • blobutil/download: no longer hardcodes the me.bin path, when extracting from updates during auto-download. When compiling ROM images, lbmk now does this by bruteforce, automatically finding the correct location of the ME image inside vendor archives; this works well on inno/lzma archives. The script then runs me_cleaner as usual, inserting that into the ROM image - this same logic is also used when inserting into release ROMs. This is in preparation for non-Lenovo sandybridge, ivybridge and haswell machines being added in future releases, e.g. Dell and HP laptops that coreboot supports.
  • blobutil/download: heavily re-factored the logic, switching to top-down order of functions, split more operations into functions, generally made the script easier to read/work on.
  • blobutil/inject: use correct offset for insertion of mrc.bin (Haswell platform, e.g. ThinkPad T440p) - as written above.
  • Removed mainboard: d945gclf - known to be problematic at boot. I have one, and I'm going to test it for re-entry in a future release.
  • Added missing dependency in Arch Linux dependencies installation script, patch courtesy of Andreas Hartmann.

Hardware supported in this release

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

Desktops (AMD, Intel, x86)

Laptops (Intel, x86)

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.