Coreboot on Lenovo X230

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This howto describes how to install Coreboot on a Lenovo X230. This document is still a draft and needs some cleanup.

In order to flash the bios chip on the X230 you need special equipment to read and write to the two BIOS chips. An easy way which for an in-place flashiung procedure is to use a raspberry pi and a special flashing clip to read from and write to the Bios chip.

The setup looks like this:

Lenovo X230 (target) BIOS Chip <– Pomodo Flash Clip <– Raspberry Pi <– Building Machine.

Because you need to build coreboot and this takes a long time on a raspberry pi, this howto assumes that you have an additional laptop/PC which will be used as building machine. The building machine will compile the coreboot ROm file and the raspberry pi is only used to read and write from and to the target device.

Links

I have looked at the following ressources to learn more about coreboot adn write this howto

Additional info has been provided by the Coreboot Mailinglist:

Hardware:

the following parts are needed to build a Coreboot flashing devices:

physical setup

using a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B V1.2 the GPIO Layout looks like this: (Hint you can get a very good overview of the layout by entering the pinout command on your pi:

,--------------------------------.
| oooooooooooooooooooo J8     +====
| 1ooooooooooooooooooo        | USB
|                             +====
|      Pi Model 3B V1.2          |
|      +----+                 +====
| |D|  |SoC |                 | USB
| |S|  |    |                 +====
| |I|  +----+                    |
|                   |C|     +======
|                   |S|     |   Net
| pwr        |HDMI| |I||A|  +======
`-| |--------|    |----|V|-------'

Revision           : a02082
SoC                : BCM2837
RAM                : 1024Mb
Storage            : MicroSD
USB ports          : 4 (excluding power)
Ethernet ports     : 1
Wi-fi              : True
Bluetooth          : True
Camera ports (CSI) : 1
Display ports (DSI): 1

J8:
   3V3  (1) (2)  5V    
 GPIO2  (3) (4)  5V    
 GPIO3  (5) (6)  GND   
 GPIO4  (7) (8)  GPIO14
   GND  (9) (10) GPIO15
GPIO17 (11) (12) GPIO18
GPIO27 (13) (14) GND   
GPIO22 (15) (16) GPIO23
   3V3 (17) (18) GPIO24
GPIO10 (19) (20) GND   
 GPIO9 (21) (22) GPIO25
GPIO11 (23) (24) GPIO8 
   GND (25) (26) GPIO7 
 GPIO0 (27) (28) GPIO1 
 GPIO5 (29) (30) GND   
 GPIO6 (31) (32) GPIO12
GPIO13 (33) (34) GND   
GPIO19 (35) (36) GPIO16
GPIO26 (37) (38) GPIO20
   GND (39) (40) GPIO21

For further information, please refer to https://pinout.xyz/

Layout of pins if you look on the pi and, the GPIO pins are located on the left side, so that USB and ethernet ports are at the top:

        | USB |  | USB |    | RJ45 |
        |     |  |     |    |      |
        +-----+  +-----+    +------+

e       +-----+
d       | o o <-  GND
g       | o o |
e       | o o |
        | o o |
o       | o o |
f       | o o |
        | o o |
R       | o o |
a  CS  -> o o <-  CLK
s       | o o <-  MISO
p       | o o <-  MOSI
b       | o o <-  3.3V 
e       | o o |
r       | o o |
r       | o o |
y       | o o |
        | o o |
P       | o o |
i       | o o |
        | o o |
        +-----+

We need to connect 6 pins to the Pomona SOIC8 5250 Test Clip using the jumper cables. you can take any color you want, to make it simpler for you, I’ll add the colors I have used:

connect 6 jumper cables to the raspberry pi GPIO pins:

  • GND black
  • CS green
  • CLK gray
  • MISO white
  • MOSI purple
  • 3.3V blue

Now connect the other end of the jumper cables to the Pomona Clip:

    MOSI (purple) 5 =|  |= 4  GND  (black)
     CLK (gray)   6 =|  |= 3  NC   (empty)
      NC (empt    7 =|  |= 2  MISO (white)
3.3V/VCC (blue)   8 =|_*|= 1  CS   (green)
                              (dot on top of the chip)

Procedure

  • Setting up Raspberry Pi
  • Install FlashROM
  • Connect Flash Clip to Raspberry Pi
  • Disassemble X230 Laptop
  • Backup existing ROM
  • Setting up Coreboot on building machine
  • Compile Coreboot
  • Configure Coreboot
  • Flash new ROM

Prepare Build machine

You can use another Qubes Laptop as Building machine.

  1. Clone the Debian template
qvm-clone debian-9 t-coreboot
  1. launch a terminal in this template an install the following packages
sudo apt-get install git wget build-essential gnat flex bison libncurses5-dev zlib1g-dev libfreetype6-dev unifont python3
  1. Create an AppVM bases on this template Important: increase private storage size, as the build process and the git repositories need some storage capacity. Example 10GB

Setting up Raspberry Pi

  1. Download Noobs
  2. Install Raspbian
  3. Enable SSH

Install FlashROM on Raspberry Pi

Flashrom is used to read the current ROM from the Bios Chip and make a backup of it. It will also be used to flash the new coreboot Bios.

  1. Install build enviroment and dependencies for flashrom

    sudo apt-get install libftdi1 libftdi-dev libusb-dev libpci-dev m4 bison flex libncurses5-dev  libncurses5 build-essential pciutils usbutils libpci-dev libusb-dev libftdi1 libftdi-dev zlib1g-dev subversion libusb-1.0 gnat wget zlib1g-dev

    Problem: some packackes could not be installed: […] Package flex is not available, but is referred to by another package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source […]

    Solution: delete all files in /var/lib/apt/lists

  2. Download and install Flashrom

    git clone https://github.com/flashrom/flashrom
cd flashrom
make
sudo make install

  3. Enable the SPI device on the Raspberry Pi.

    sudo raspi-config
# In the menu choose:
# - 5 Interfacing Options  Configure connections to peripherals 
# - P4 SPI Enable/Disable automatic loading of SPI kernel module
# - Would you like the SPI interface to be enabled?
# - Yes 
sudo reboot

  4. Modprobe SPI driver

    sudo modprobe spi_bcm2835
sudo modprobe spidev

Prepare Build machine (the AppVM NOT the template)

Setup Coreboot

Cloning the coreboot git. and recursively clone the necessary other gits.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/coreboot/coreboot
cd ~/coreboot/3rdparty
git clone http://review.coreboot.org/p/blobs.git

Setup Extraction Tool for binary blobs

Build and install the extraction tool for the binary blobs.

cd ~/coreboot/util/ifdtool
make
sudo make install

on Raspberry Pi

read existing BIOS and transfer it to build machine

  1. Read upper bios chip (4MB)

    pi@raspberrypi:~ $ flashrom -p linux_spi:dev=/dev/spidev0.0,spispeed=1000 -c "MX25L3206E/MX25L3208E" -r x230-bios-top1.bin
flashrom p1.0-69-g3f7e341 on Linux 4.14.30-v7+ (armv7l)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at https://flashrom.org

Using clock_gettime for delay loops (clk_id: 1, resolution: 1ns).
Found Macronix flash chip "MX25L3205D/MX25L3208D" (4096 kB, SPI) on linux_spi.
Reading flash... done.

    Repeat this two more times creating: x230-bios-top2.bin and x230-bios-top3.bin

  2. Read lower bios chip (8MB)

    pi@raspberrypi:~ $ flashrom -p linux_spi:dev=/dev/spidev0.0,spispeed=1000 -c "MX25L6406E/MX25L6408E" -r x230-bios-bottom1.bin
flashrom p1.0-69-g3f7e341 on Linux 4.14.30-v7+ (armv7l)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at https://flashrom.org

Using clock_gettime for delay loops (clk_id: 1, resolution: 1ns).
Found Eon flash chip "EN25QH64" (8192 kB, SPI) on linux_spi.
Reading flash... done.

    Repeat this 2 more times and create two more copies x230-bios-bottom2.bin and x230-bios-bottom3.bin

  3. verify that all files are identical for the top 4MB bios chip:

    pi@raspberrypi:~ $ md5sum x230-bios-top?.bin
54bfde566dffa17760a6115f27309681  x230-bios-top1.bin
54bfde566dffa17760a6115f27309681  x230-bios-top2.bin
54bfde566dffa17760a6115f27309681  x230-bios-top3.bin

    for the lower 8MB bios chip:

    pi@raspberrypi:~ $ md5sum x230-bios-bottom?.bin
ac7dffb64f7d11ec9b13cc9449e48a64  x230-bios-bottom1.bin
ac7dffb64f7d11ec9b13cc9449e48a64  x230-bios-bottom2.bin
ac7dffb64f7d11ec9b13cc9449e48a64  x230-bios-bottom3.bin

on build machine: copy ROM files from raspberry pi

  1. Copy the ROMs from raspberry pi to the “build machine”

    user@my-coreboot:~/coreboot/ROM$ scp pi@192.168.200.107:~/x230-bios-* .
pi@192.168.200.107's password: 
x230-bios-bottom1.bin                                                                        100% 8192KB  10.8MB/s   00:00    
x230-bios-top1.bin                                                                           100% 4096KB  11.1MB/s   00:00

  2. Merge two files into one ROM file

    cat x230-bios-bottom1.bin x230-bios-top1.bin > x230-bios.rom

  3. move all rom files to ~/coreboot/ROM

    mkdir ~/coreboot/ROM
mv x230-* ~/coreboot/ROM

Extract Blobs from exracted ROM

user@my-coreboot:~/coreboot/ROM$ cd ~/coreboot/ROM
user@my-coreboot:~/coreboot/ROM$ ifdtool -x x230-bios.rom
File x230-bios-bottom1.bin is 8388608 bytes
  Flash Region 0 (Flash Descriptor): 00000000 - 00000fff 
  Flash Region 1 (BIOS): 00500000 - 00bfffff 
Error while writing: Success
  Flash Region 2 (Intel ME): 00003000 - 004fffff 
  Flash Region 3 (GbE): 00001000 - 00002fff 
  Flash Region 4 (Platform Data): 00fff000 - 00000fff (unused)

you will now find the following files:

user@my-coreboot:~/coreboot/ROM$ ls -la
total 36872
drwxr-xr-x  2 user user     4096 Apr  6 00:48 .
drwxr-xr-x 10 user user     4096 Apr  6 00:43 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 user user     4096 Apr  6 00:48 flashregion_0_flashdescriptor.bin
-rw-r--r--  1 user user  7340032 Apr  6 00:48 flashregion_1_bios.bin
-rw-r--r--  1 user user  5230592 Apr  6 00:48 flashregion_2_intel_me.bin
-rw-r--r--  1 user user     8192 Apr  6 00:48 flashregion_3_gbe.bin
-rw-r--r--  1 user user 12582912 Apr  6 00:30 x230-bios.bin
-rw-r--r--  1 user user  8388608 Apr  5 23:38 x230-bios-bottom1.bin
-rw-r--r--  1 user user  4194304 Apr  5 23:38 x230-bios-top1.bin

Extract VGA Blob

https://www.coreboot.org/VGA_support#UEFI_Method

cd ~/coreboot
sudo apt-get install qt5-default
git clone http://github.com/LongSoft/UEFITool.git
cd UEFITool
qmake
make

Start UEFITool

./UEFITool

File > Open BIOS Image File Open the ROM-file from the 4MB BIOS-Chip (x230-bios-top1.bin) or the merged ROM (x230-bios.bin)

will generate the following messages: “parseVolume: unknown file system FFF12B8D-7696-4C8B-A985-2747075B4F50 parseBios: volume size stored in header 61000h (397312) differs from calculated using block map 40000h (262144) parseVolume: unknown file system 00504624-8A59-4EEB-BD0F-6B36E96128E0 parseBios: volume size stored in header 2F000h (192512) differs from calculated using block map 30000h (196608) parseFile: invalid data checksum”

  • Hit CTRL+F (Search…), 3rd Tab (Text)
  • Search for: VGA Compatible BIOS (Uncheck Unicode)
  • Will show the following message in the lower part of the window: ASCII text “VGA Compatible BIOS” found in Raw section at offset 22h
  • Double click on the line in the message windows which bring you to the raw section
  • Right Click on “Raw section” and choose “Extract Body”
  • Save file as ~/coreboot/ROM/vga.rom

Copy the blobs to coreboot dir

Create the “blob-directory” where coreboot looks for BLOBs:

mkdir -p ~/coreboot/3rdparty/blobs/mainboard/lenovo/x230

In order to have the blobs available for coreboot the easiest way is to rename and copy them to the default locations:

cp ~/coreboot/ROM/flashregion_0_flashdescriptor.bin ~/coreboot/3rdparty/blobs/mainboard/lenovo/x230/descriptor.bin
cp ~/coreboot/ROM/flashregion_2_intel_me.bin        ~/coreboot/3rdparty/blobs/mainboard/lenovo/x230/me.bin
cp ~/coreboot/ROM/flashregion_3_gbe.bin             ~/coreboot/3rdparty/blobs/mainboard/lenovo/x230/gbe.bin
cp ~/coreboot/ROM/vga.rom                           ~/coreboot/3rdparty/blobs/mainboard/lenovo/x230/pci8086,0166.rom

Configure and build Coreboot

  1. Launch Configuration menu

    cd ~/coreboot/
make nconfig

    Enter to open Submenu, Escape to switch back. F6 saves config to /home/user/coreboot/.config F9 quits config menu

    ###FIXME: needs more information about which options to choose and how to import the Blobs As a workarround, look at the config-file from my succesfull X230 Coreboot installation. This file has to be places in ~/coreboot/.config

  2. build build-chain using 7 from total 8 cores on my W540 (adapt this to your possibilities) and finally build coreboot

    make crossgcc-i386 CPUS=7
make iasl
make

The coreboot file should be located at ~/coreboot/build/coreboot.rom

Split coreboot ROM

after building coreboot you need to the 12mb file into a 4mb and 8mb file.

mkdir ~/coreboot/ROM-ready
# Split first 8MB of coreboot.rom (bottom-chip)
dd if=~/coreboot/build/coreboot.rom of=~/coreboot/ROM-ready/x230-coreboot-8mb.rom bs=1024 count=$[1024*8] skip=0

# Split last 4MB of coreboot.rom (top-chip)
dd if=~/coreboot/build/coreboot.rom of=~/coreboot/ROM-ready/x230-coreboot-4mb.rom bs=1024 count=$[1024*4] skip=$[1024*8]

Copy ROM to raspberry pi and flash

Transfer the two new ROM files over to the raspberry pi

scp x230-coreboot-* pi@192.168.200.107:~/

I have moved the coreboot-ROM files to a new directory ~/ROM-ready on the raspberry pi

Logon to the pi and flash both chips:

# write top chip (4MB)
pi@raspberrypi:~/ROM-ready $ sudo flashrom -p linux_spi:dev=/dev/spidev0.0,spispeed=1000 -c "MX25L3206E/MX25L3208E" -w x230-coreboot-4mb.rom 
flashrom p1.0-69-g3f7e341 on Linux 4.14.30-v7+ (armv7l)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at https://flashrom.org

Using clock_gettime for delay loops (clk_id: 1, resolution: 1ns).
Found Macronix flash chip "MX25L3205D/MX25L3208D" (4096 kB, SPI) on linux_spi.
Reading old flash chip contents... done.
Erasing and writing flash chip... Erase/write done.
Verifying flash... VERIFIED.

# write bottom chip (8MB)
pi@raspberrypi:~/ROM-ready $ sudo flashrom -p linux_spi:dev=/dev/spidev0.0,spispeed=1000 -c "MX25L6406E/MX25L6408E" -w x230-coreboot-8mb.rom 
flashrom p1.0-69-g3f7e341 on Linux 4.14.30-v7+ (armv7l)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at https://flashrom.org

Using clock_gettime for delay loops (clk_id: 1, resolution: 1ns).
Found Eon flash chip "EN25QH64" (8192 kB, SPI) on linux_spi.
Reading old flash chip contents... done.
Erasing and writing flash chip... Erase/write done.
Verifying flash... VERIFIED.

Test drive

now it is time to cross fingers and try if you was able to flash coreboot. Remove the Pomodo-Clip, put your keyboard back, put your battery in and power on. In case you run into any problems, you can always reflash your stock rom.

If you have comments or need help, feel free to contact the main contributor of this howto https://github.com/one7two99

This document was migrated from the qubes-community project
  • Page archive
  • First commit: 06 Apr 2018. Last commit: 17 Jun 2018.
  • Applicable Qubes OS releases based on commit dates and supported releases: 3.2, 4.0
  • Original author(s) (GitHub usernames): one7two99, taradiddles
  • Original author(s) (forum usernames): @taradiddles
  • Document license: GPLv2
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