[flashrom] Flashrom -V output from Tyan S2915

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

Hi Richard,

On 23.07.2010 15:06, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> It still doesn't work for me.  The ROM image supplied by Tyan is
> larger than 1MB and flashrom reports:
>
> Error: Image size doesn't match
>
> Presumably there is some sort of header in the image file.
>   

Yes, vendors usually have image files with some additional information
attached at the end. The vendor image files I know of either have the
correct size or they can be truncated to the correct size (throw away
the end).

> Anyway, I hope this output is useful to you in some way.
>   

Yes it is. There are some peculiarities I'd like to discuss with you,
though.


> flashrom v0.9.2-r1099 on Linux 2.6.33.6-147.fc13.x86_64 (x86_64), built with libpci 3.1.6, GCC 4.4.4 20100630 (Red Hat 4.4.4-10), little endian
> Calibrating delay loop... OS timer resolution is 999 usecs, 1406M loops per second, 10 myus = 0 us, 100 myus = 0 us, 1000 myus = 999 us, 10000 myus = 9999 us, 3996 myus = 3999 us, OK.
>   

It is highly unusual for a halfway modern Linux system to have a timer
resolution of 1 ms. Usually the Linux kernel will use a time source
which has 10 us accuracy or better. Is this some special distribution
kernel?


> DMI string system-manufacturer: "# SMBIOS implementations newer than version 2.6 are not"
> DMI string system-product-name: "# SMBIOS implementations newer than version 2.6 are not"
> DMI string system-version: "# SMBIOS implementations newer than version 2.6 are not"
> DMI string baseboard-manufacturer: "# SMBIOS implementations newer than version 2.6 are not"
> DMI string baseboard-product-name: "# SMBIOS implementations newer than version 2.6 are not"
> DMI string baseboard-version: "# SMBIOS implementations newer than version 2.6 are not"
> DMI string chassis-type: "# SMBIOS implementations newer than version 2.6 are not"
>   

Now this is a serious problem. Apparently dmidecode in Fedora has a
patch in the RPM (dmidecode-warn-on-unsupported-smbios-version.patch)
which breaks the original documented output format. If this only
affected the board enables, it wouldn't be that bad (failing/corrupting
writes on a few dozen boards which can be fixed interactively), but it
also completely disables laptop detection and that means Fedora will get
bug reports about hard lockups and/or disabled fans on laptops.
I don't want to blame Fedora because this is a patch hand-picked from
upstream dmidecode. We'll add a workaorund to flashrom ASAP.

Regards,
Carl-Daniel

-- 
http://www.hailfinger.org/