Ubuntu 17.10 can brick some laptops

[Posted December 20, 2017 by corbet]

Downloads of Ubuntu 17.10 have been disabled due to an issue that can cause it to corrupt the firmware on some laptops. Lenovo laptops appear to be the most affected, but the problem is apparently not limited to them. The intel-spi driver has been named as the source of the problem; it's not clear whether other distributions may also be affected. If you downloaded 17.10, you might want to hold off on installing it.

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Posted Dec 20, 2017 14:27 UTC (Wed) by hholzgra (subscriber, #11737) [Link]

Semi on-topic: does anyone know about some similar issues with older Ubuntu versions and the Thinkpad T430s?

I bricked six motherboards over the span of my three years service coverage, and then one more after service ended. Still looking for a way to maybe reactivate that laptop as a spare again ...

Ubuntu 17.10 can brick some laptops

Posted Dec 20, 2017 18:23 UTC (Wed) by fillods (subscriber, #22226) [Link]

A friend of mine had its Thinkpad X230 bricked, but not sure about the real cause.

Ubuntu 17.10 can brick some laptops

Posted Dec 21, 2017 9:53 UTC (Thu) by gelma (subscriber, #13823) [Link]

I'm using same laptop since years (probably 2013), always with latests Ubuntu.

Well, usually I compile git Kernel.

Anyway, it's difficult to compare pattern usage.

Point is: 'till now, never had troubles. But I also keep its BIOS updated.

Ciao,
Andrea

Ubuntu 17.10 can brick some laptops

Posted Dec 20, 2017 14:37 UTC (Wed) by Otus (subscriber, #67685) [Link]

If it's a kernel issue, does it apply to HWE kernels on 16.04?

Ubuntu 17.10 can brick some laptops

Posted Dec 21, 2017 11:52 UTC (Thu) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]

The HWE kernel on 16.04 LTS is currently on 4.10, ie matches 17.04's kernel.

It'll be updated to 4.13 in January-February so this did not affect 16.04 LTS users directly.

Ubuntu 17.10 can brick some laptops

Posted Dec 21, 2017 13:57 UTC (Thu) by Otus (subscriber, #67685) [Link]

But hwe-edge is 4.13. Is that buggy?

Ubuntu 17.10 can brick some laptops

Posted Dec 21, 2017 18:56 UTC (Thu) by simosx (subscriber, #24338) [Link]

You can check with
<blockquote>
grep INTEL_SPI /boot/config-`uname -r`
</blockquote>

The issue is whether this Linux kernel module is available or not.

Soon there will be updates that do not compile that kernel module, and it will not be present anymore.

Ubuntu 17.10 can brick some laptops

Posted Dec 22, 2017 6:22 UTC (Fri) by Otus (subscriber, #67685) [Link]

Thanks,

$ grep INTEL_SPI /boot/config-*
/boot/config-4.13.0-19-generic:CONFIG_SPI_INTEL_SPI=m
/boot/config-4.13.0-19-generic:CONFIG_SPI_INTEL_SPI_PLATFORM=m
/boot/config-4.13.0-21-generic:# CONFIG_SPI_INTEL_SPI_PLATFORM is not set

So apparently it was an issue but already fixed in the latest.

(Luckily I had not yet moved anything but my Ryzen system to these kernels.)

Ubuntu 17.10 can brick some laptops

Posted Dec 20, 2017 14:50 UTC (Wed) by linusw (subscriber, #40300) [Link]

The "intel-spi" driver is not an SPI driver but the Intel SPI flash memory driver in drivers/mtd/spi-nor/intel-* which I guess is used for accessing the BIOS flash.

Interestingly this SPI flash driver does not make use of the SPI subsystem in drivers/spi at all, instead it has its own driver.

I guess the hardware is a front-end for some specific-purpose SPI serializer that is ad hoc for SPI flash.

Credit where credit is due.

Ubuntu 17.10 can brick some laptops

Posted Dec 22, 2017 22:43 UTC (Fri) by luto (subscriber, #39314) [Link]

Intel chipsets have a specialized SPI master just for boot flash. I haven't checked whether that's what this driver is for.

Ubuntu 17.10 can brick some laptops

Posted Dec 20, 2017 18:49 UTC (Wed) by flussence (subscriber, #85566) [Link]

That's odd, the symptoms sound exactly the same as I had with my no-name UEFI ITX motherboard a few months ago. The system boots up, but changes to the boot settings absolutely will not stick. Eventually I found out simply using the CMOS reset jumper got things back to normal, but I guess that's not an option with these laptops.

Ubuntu 17.10 can brick some laptops

Posted Dec 20, 2017 18:54 UTC (Wed) by flussence (subscriber, #85566) [Link]

(I forgot to add: this sort of happened out of nowhere, the only thing in common was UEFI - Gentoo/AMD system.)

Ubuntu 17.10 can brick some laptops

Posted Dec 21, 2017 12:47 UTC (Thu) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link]

Having bricked a Lenovo once: the amount of space dedicated to tracking UEFI variables is relatively small. One upgrade and a Lenovo x121e failed to boot - out of space. Reflashing a BIOS sorted it out. [Posting from the same laptop now. :) ]

Ubuntu 17.10 can brick some laptops

Posted Dec 21, 2017 14:10 UTC (Thu) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]

Interestingly I get some hangs since the update on a Lenovo laptop (usually when switching from QtCreator to Konsole to start a multi-job compilation). I wonder if it's linked. The laptop is not bricked though...