Re: flashrom package needs update

[Kei Kebreau]

ng0 <address@hidden> writes:

> ng0 <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> Someone should update flashrom to 0.9.9. 
>> (https://www.flashrom.org/Flashrom/0.9.9)
>> I tried and do not understand enough of flashrom to update the patch we need.
>
> Additionally we need to check what's different about GuixSD that this
> happens:
>
> address@hidden /home/ng0# flashrom -p internal -w libreboot_latest_stable.rom
> flashrom v0.9.7-r1711 on Linux 4.7.0-gnu (x86_64)
> flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org
>
> Calibrating delay loop... OK.
> Error accessing high tables, 0x100000 bytes at 0x000000007dad6000
> /dev/mem mmap failed: Operation not permitted
> Failed getting access to coreboot high tables.
> ========================================================================
> WARNING! You seem to be running flashrom on an unsupported laptop.
> Laptops, notebooks and netbooks are difficult to support and we
> recommend to use the vendor flashing utility. The embedded controller
> (EC) in these machines often interacts badly with flashing.
> See the manpage and http://www.flashrom.org/Laptops for details.
>
> If flash is shared with the EC, erase is guaranteed to brick your laptop
> and write may brick your laptop.
> Read and probe may irritate your EC and cause fan failure, backlight
> failure and sudden poweroff.
> You have been warned.
> ========================================================================
> Aborting.
> Error: Programmer initialization failed.
>
>
>
> I value that GuixSD seems to be more protective than any other system in
> that regard where I could just become root and run flashrom, but maybe
> we need to make an exception for flashrom and similar software.
> Booting into ubuntu-live and running a statically linked binary of
> flashrom just made me flash libreboot stable. I want to do this from
> within GuixSD.

This is mentioned in Libreboot's documentation (top of the page here:
https://libreboot.org/docs/install/index.html). The GuixSD Linux-libre
kernel is configured with CONFIG_STRICT_DEVMEM enabled, which I presume
Libreboot uses for software-based flashing.

If you add linux to the list "use-package-modules" in your system
configuration and add (kernel-arguments '("iomem=relaxed")) to your
"operating-system" configuration, the flashing utility will work correctly.

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