Provide IFD, Gbe and ME blobs #307
Description
The 12 MB x230 ROM image isn't flashable since it doesn't include the IFD and ME sections. This isn't normally a large problem for updates since flashrom-x230 won't touch the ME region, but it does lead to problems for initial install.
tlaurion hijacking top post here to give actual status in a glimpse.
- @osresearch accepted that heads distribute extracted IFD from an original Lenovo's rom, lower down in this issue here. The goal of this is to not generate the IFD ourselves and just unlock the one being present in the repository, on which BIOS region has been extended resulting of freed ME region, where the ME region is reduced to the minimal size possible. This results in a BIOS region of 11.5mb instead of 7mb, mitigating Quest to reduce firmware size #590 issue until help joins forces for boards with limited SPI flash space without the need of soldering...
- 3 collaborators decided to support the adventure of not waiting for legal approval, nor expecting Intel reply, and going forward and include the ME cleaned binary.
Some efforts are still needed so the blob is downloaded directly from Lenovo, on which innoextract needs to be applied to remove the blob itself from local blob directory and do the required magic in a script having downloaded the blob from Lenovo website directly.Meanwhile the cleaned blob is present in tree with manual reproducibility instructions in xx30's blobs's directory README. Read the xx30 blobs README here for more details. Please show interest for being paid fixing this. - Along the adventure, it was discovered and documented upstream that the GBE region needs to be present to have a functional ethernet card. This GBE blob could be totally generated. But would need some low level people involved. I'm not good at reading reference manual and implementing what is required. Please show interest for being paid fixing this.
Mitigations from dropping those binaries would be to:
- Claim right to repair laws?
- Claim Fair use laws?
- Generate those blobs from source code (see below)
So the result of the ongoing #703 PR is a PoC of that, which requires Heads to fake MAC address on boot to not have a MAC collision on the same LAN network segment if many Heads xx30 empowered machines are present.
Todo:
- Generate GBE blob to remove the GBE blob from tree. Seperate issue: Generate GBE blob from coreboot's bincfg tool #796
- Extract ME from Lenovo website (innoextract) and run me_cleaner on top of it to put resulting blob locally to remove it from tree. Seperate issue: Download, innoextract Lonovo website's downloaded ME blob and put it under blobs/xx30 from a module #797
