Saddest bug ever?

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dreamer
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Joined: Sun Oct 15, 2017 11:34 am

Saddest bug ever?

#1 Post by dreamer »

So by reading omgubuntu I came across this bug report:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... ug/1734147

This makes me lose faith in hardware and software. It's so crazy I had to share it.

One guy fixed his laptop - reply #110

"I got my y50-70 fixed today.
The FIX was to change the BIOS chip with a new one! Costs me 100€.
Good bye ubuntu, let the Windows headaches come back again. This is too bad situation."

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Adrian
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Re: Saddest bug ever?

#2 Post by Adrian »

Wow, is that a linux kernel problem or something that Ubuntu enabled? Are those drivers in an experimental section in kernel options?

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dreamer
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Re: Saddest bug ever?

#3 Post by dreamer »

I only know what the bug description says:

"Impact: Many users are reporting issues with bios corruption with 17.10. This seems to stem from enabling the intel-spi-* drivers in the kernel, which don't appear to be ready for use on end-user machines."

Installing in Legacy mode should be safe (although some reports state otherwise), writing to BIOS NVRAM is riskier. But who knows what that driver really did? It wasn't just Lenovo laptops that were affected. The problem seems more Intel specific than Ubuntu specific. I still wonder how a driver can cause BIOS corruption. Crazy.

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Stevo
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Re: Saddest bug ever?

#4 Post by Stevo »

Thankfully, it doesn't look like those drivers are in the Debian or Liquorix kernels.

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dolphin_oracle
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Re: Saddest bug ever?

#5 Post by dolphin_oracle »

I had a kernel panic spam garbage data into my nvram once. totally hosed my bootloaders. I had to use the settings utility to clear the nvram and start over. luckily since the efi boot loaders are not stored there, but rather just pointers, it was easy to add them back.
http://www.youtube.com/runwiththedolphin
lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 - MX-23
FYI: mx "test" repo is not the same thing as debian testing repo.

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dreamer
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Re: Saddest bug ever?

#6 Post by dreamer »

Thanks for the feedback.
The main problem is that the NVRAM became non-writable. So instead of just dealing with a software bug you are dealing with broken hardware and replacing the BIOS chip is a lot more hassle than let's say replace a faulty drive.

@Stevo Good to know. Thanks.

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