Nick: Billy
E-mail: BCroan@UnRealServers.net
Board: Quanta Freedom
Contents: 


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Billy Croan <BCroan@unrealservers.net>
Date: Sun, Dec 5, 2021 at 7:32 AM
Subject: Quanta Freedom Firmware project
To: <flashrom@flashrom.org>


I've been tasked with updating bioses on some machines we have which have no manufacturer support.  They were made by Quanta I think, as part of OpenCompute project.  I have several boards that area all physically the same, but half of them have a different bios version, and we need them to all match.

For testing, I took a node with the old bios version, F02_3A18, and a board with the new one, F02_3A20, and used -r to create a bios image. 

Then I used -w to write that same image back to the mobo and rebooted.  No problem on either board...

Then I copied the images to the opposite machine, and tried a -w, and that's when I saw:
This means we have to add special support for your board, programmer or flash
chip. Please report this on IRC at chat.freenode.net (channel #flashrom) or
mail flashrom@flashrom.org, thanks!

So, here I am.

it may be worth mentioning that between the two machines, the CHIPNAME, referred to as such at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Flashing_BIOS_from_Linux is different.  Here's what it shows:

[root@GH-11 ~]# flashrom --programmer internal
flashrom v1.0.1 on Linux 3.10.0-1160.49.1.el7.x86_64 (x86_64)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at https://flashrom.org

Using clock_gettime for delay loops (clk_id: 1, resolution: 1ns).
Found chipset "Intel ICH10R".
Enabling flash write... Warning: Setting Bios Control at 0xdc from 0x02 to 0x01 failed.
New value is 0x03.
OK.
Found Macronix flash chip "MX25L3205(A)" (4096 kB, SPI) mapped at physical address 0x00000000ffc00000.
Found Macronix flash chip "MX25L3205D/MX25L3208D" (4096 kB, SPI) mapped at physical address 0x00000000ffc00000.
Found Macronix flash chip "MX25L3206E/MX25L3208E" (4096 kB, SPI) mapped at physical address 0x00000000ffc00000.
Found Macronix flash chip "MX25L3273E" (4096 kB, SPI) mapped at physical address 0x00000000ffc00000.
Multiple flash chip definitions match the detected chip(s): "MX25L3205(A)", "MX25L3205D/MX25L3208D", "MX25L3206E/MX25L3208E", "MX25L3273E"
Please specify which chip definition to use with the -c <chipname> option.
[root@GH-11 ~]#

[root@GH-12 ~]# flashrom --programmer internal
flashrom v1.0.1 on Linux 3.10.0-1160.49.1.el7.x86_64 (x86_64)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at https://flashrom.org

Using clock_gettime for delay loops (clk_id: 1, resolution: 1ns).
Found chipset "Intel ICH10R".
Enabling flash write... Warning: Setting Bios Control at 0xdc from 0x02 to 0x01 failed.
New value is 0x03.
OK.
Found Winbond flash chip "W25Q32.V" (4096 kB, SPI) mapped at physical address 0x00000000ffc00000.
No operations were specified.
[root@GH-12 ~]#

comparing dmidecode on the two machines only shows differences in serial numbers, and ram slots used.  all other hardware matches, so I'm pretty sure they're the same hardware.

Why might one show up with a different chipset for bios image?

Here's some info I've gathered on these boards. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qp1qBXW0Y9k_Xlj1VZ-OYmF6gfm31G00tRRXYmoPaMM/edit?usp=sharing
Th G Doc lists all three hardware types we have from Quanta.  The boards I'm writing about in this message, for this firmware exercise are called 13-P in this document.

I have yet to see any actual manual for this hardware.  tarball attached has firmware as captured on both machines.

So.  What might I try to gain confidence that I can freely reboot these machines again without them being bricked?

When I tried flashing the originally captured firmware back on it, I got the same error message as I got when I tried transplanting the firmwares.

I did make sure that flashing the original firmware of each node back to them didn't brick them first.  And I did make sure the firmware files were the same size to the byte on both of them.  But it feels like the flash storage is tainted now on GH-11 because it gets transaction errors now.

Is there something I need to do to initialize the bios flashing chipset to work properly?