Purism

Beautiful, Secure, Privacy-Respecting Laptops, Tablets, PCs, and Phones

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Hey everyone, I’m happy to announce the release of an update to our coreboot images for Librem 13 v2 and Librem 15 v3 machines.

All new laptops will come pre-loaded with this new update, and everyone else can update their machines using our existing build script which was updated to build the newest image. Some important remarks:

Please read the instructions below to make sure the image gets built properly and make sure to select the correct machine type in the menu for the build script.
The build script was initially written as a tool for internal use, and therefore isn’t as polished as it could be, so if you want something that just quickly applies updates without building/compiling the whole thing, we hope to provide such a (simpler) script in the future.

What’s new?

This is a follow up from Kyle’s previous blog post, and now that the image has been fully tested, you can all enjoy it and get one of our most requested feature : VT-d support for Qubes 4.0 to work.

The new version is “4.7-Purism-1” and here is the ChangeLog:

Update to coreboot 4.7
Update to FSP 2.0
Add IOMMU support
Enable TPM support
Fixed ATA errors at 6Gbps

While coreboot 4.7 has not been officially released, it was “tagged” on October 31st in coreboot’s git repository, and this release is based on that tag with the IOMMU (VT-d) and TPM support added on top of it.

If your laptop came with the TPM chip installed, you need to update your coreboot image to this version in order to use the TPM hardware.

How to build it?

To build the latest coreboot image :

Download the build script
mkdir building-coreboot && cd building-coreboot && wget https://code.wp.puri.sm/kakaroto/coreboot-files/raw/master/build_coreboot.sh
Install the required dependencies:
sudo apt-get install git build-essential bison flex m4 zlib1g-dev gnat libpci-dev libusb-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev dmidecode bsdiff python2.7
Run the script on your Librem machine:
chmod +x build_coreboot.sh && ./build_coreboot.sh
Follow the instructions on the screen, be sure to select your correct Librem laptop revision (Librem 13v2 or Librem 15v3), and give it time to build the image.
Once done, if everything went according to plan, it will ask you if you want to flash the newly built image
Make sure you are not running on low battery and select Yes
Reboot your machine once the flashing process is done.

For matters specifically related to this build script (not related to how to use a TPM per se), you may also want to check out the main forum thread about our coreboot build script, where discussion and testing has been going on over the past few months.

Verifying the presence of a TPM

If you are unsure whether or not you have a TPM installed on your system, install the tpm-tools package and then run sudo tpm_version to confirm that a TPM is detected on your system.

$ sudo tpm_version TPM 1.2 Version Info: Chip Version: 1.2.4.40 Spec Level: 2 Errata Revision: 3 TPM Vendor ID: IFX Vendor Specific data: 04280077 0074706d 3631ffff ff TPM Version: 01010000 Manufacturer Info: 49465800

If your machine came with a TPM, you can now take advantage of its capabilities, if you already have particular uses planned for it. Enjoy!

February 2018 coreboot update now available