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% Libreboot 20230423 released! % Leah Rowe % 23 April 2023

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 20230413, was released on 13 April in 2023. This new release, Libreboot 20230423, is released today on April 23rd, 2023.

This is marked as a testing release, though it is basically stable. We've been going at it like crazy, on a big spree adding more mainboards from coreboot. Some fixes to the build system were also made, since the last release only 10 days ago.

The priority for Libreboot is to add as many new boards as possible, from now to the next stable release (ETA Q3 2023), with many testing releases in between. Release early, release often. Rigorious testing ensues.

Build from source

This release was build-tested on Debian Sid, as of 23 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

This is in the last 10 days, since the previous release was 10 days ago! Ergo, this is a very conservative changelog. It seems Libreboot has been releasing almost fortnightly, as of late; perhaps this could continue from now on.

New mainboards now supported:

  • Dell Latitude E6400 (laptop) (GM45, blob-free, flashable entirely in software, no disassembly required!) - courtesy Nicholas Chin, nic3-14159 on Libreboot IRC.
  • HP Compaq 8200 Elite SFF (desktop), courtesy Riku Viitanen (Riku_V on Libreboot IRC) - Sandybridge hardware generation, really nice machine, cheap, easy to flash, supports 32GB RAM, multiple HDDs etc.
  • HP EliteBook Folio 9470m (laptop), courtesy Riku Viitanen (IvyBridge gen)
  • HP EliteBook 2560p (laptop), courtesy Riku Viitanen (seriously cool guy) - Sandybridge hardware gen

Build system changes:

  • GM45 no-microcode bug mitigations re-added: revert to old SMRR handling and disable PECI (for e.g. X200/T400 users who want to remove microcode updates, using cbfstool) - fixes broken reboot/speedstep CPU scaling in such configuration. - Patch: https://browse.libreboot.org/lbmk.git/commit/?id=bd4ea9a02845b22a09b73ebb015ce134234d100b (patch by Leah Rowe) - this also affects Dell Latitude E6400, and it can be used there on that board. We recommend keeping microcode updates, but these mitigations were re-added to satisfy users of older releases that excluded them, who want to still have the option to feasibly run without them. This is ill advised, due to bugs that the microcode updates fix
  • blobutil/inject: Fixed bad variable expansion pattern. Patch courtesy Leah Rowe.
  • GRUB patch: fix hanging on HP EliteBooks, by implementing a 200ms timeout for PS/2 keyboard initialisation. Patch courtesy of Riku Viitanen, and it fixes this issue which has existed in coreboot for years: https://browse.libreboot.org/lbmk.git/plain/resources/grub/patches/0005-at-keyboard-timeout.patch?id=20192c08488104f5cacc1f3842ae8e0ee74c44ef
  • build/release/roms: HP KBC1126 EC firmware scrubbed from release ROMs, for re-insertion later via ./blobutil download and ./blobutil inject like with ME images via me_cleaner - for HP laptops. Patch courtesy Leah Rowe.
  • build/dependencies/parabola: New script for installing build dependencies in Parabola GNU+Linux, courtesy of Riku Viitanen (Riku_V on Libreboot IRC)
  • util/nvmutil: sorted includes alphabetically; sys/ first (puffy!) - courtesy Leah Rowe.
  • util/e6400-flash-unlock: New utility for Dell Latitude E6400 added, written by Nicholas Chin (nic3-14159 on Libreboot IRC). It sends EC commands to pull a GPIO connected to GPIO33/HDA_DOCK_EN in the chipset to a low logic state, disabling IFD-based flash protections. Additionally, it bypasses the SMM BIOS lock protection by disabling SMIs, and since Dell's own BIOS offers no other protections, the machine can be flashed entirely with software on the host CPU, from Dell BIOS to Libreboot! See: https://browse.libreboot.org/lbmk.git/tree/util/e6400-flash-unlock
  • GRUB payload: grub.cfg menu timeout now 30s, not 5s (courtesy Leah Rowe)
  • blobutil/download: support downloading KBC1126-based EC firmware for HP laptops. (patch by Leah Rowe)
  • blobutil/download: Support extracting me.bin from full archives, when running ./blobutil download - this is done, using the -M option in me_cleaner (some vendors put whole ROM images with IFD, GBE, ME and BIOS regions in them, inside their BIOS update archives - we only need to get ME from them, to run through me_cleaner) in me_cleaner. Ninja'd into lbmk by Leah Rowe.

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)

More boards soon!

I've purchased about ~10 HP mainboards, all of the viable sandybridge, ivybridge and haswell ones from coreboot. I'm going to add them all.

I also have Dell Optiplex 7020 and 9020; these are on coreboot gerrit and will also be added, in the next Libreboot release (Haswell gen).

I'm going to re-work a lot of the merged Haswell boards, so that they can also make use of Angel's experimental libre MRC raminit and such, currently available on ThinkPad T440p and W541 as an option in Libreboot (including in this release!)

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.