Hello David, your mail reads a bit confusing, I'll try to explain some things inline below. On 5/23/25 21:11, Dave Kenney wrote:
Hello , I've never used Flashprog. Not sure what version to download. My laptop is a Lenovo X-200 64 bit/ 8G ram Libreboot w/ Linux Mint 21.2 OS. Having issues w/ the Libreboot & want to erase.
If I understand correctly, you want to return to the vendor firmware aka. BIOS? libreboot replaces the former, hence if you want to return, you can't just erase it. You'd have to overwrite it with the original BIOS. So you'll first need a ready-to-write copy of the BIOS. If you installed libreboot yourself and made a backup before, that'd do. If you don't have that, I suggest you reach out to libreboot folks.
Please direct me to the proper version & any instructions for usage. I looked at the Man Flashprog pages but the -E , Erase command didn't help since I never got the application working. I need to flash the EC chip & remove so will :
IIRC, libreboot doesn't do anything with the EC. Also, again, removing will not do, you'd have to replace libreboot.
sudo apt update & sudo apt install flashprog in the terminal work, or are there other commands I should be using once the proper file is downloaded?
There is no ready package for Linux Mint. But you can build flashprog yourself. The following commands should get you going: $ sudo apt-get install gcc git pkg-config meson libpci-dev $ git clone https://review.sourcearcade.org/flashprog $ cd flashprog $ meson setup build $ ninja -C build If successful, you'll have the program ready in the build/ subdirectory and can call it as follows: $ sudo build/flashprog -p internal This would just probe for the BIOS flash chip. If successful it should print the model and size of your chip. The size can give you a hint for the BIOS file you'd write, it has to match exactly. There's a chance that flashprog can unambiguously tell the model, then it will ask you to specify the model with `-c`. At this point it's a good idea to make a backup of the current chip contents: $ sudo build/flashprog -p internal -r backup.rom You'll probably have more question before you get to actually writing something. But once you have everything in place and a BIOS file that you are sure will work (if not, your X200 will be a brick with much more work needed to recover), you can write with this command: $ sudo build/flashprog -p internal -w bios.rom And please never run `-E` explicitly, your machine wouldn't boot anymore. I know that's a lot to take in, but hope it will help you on your journey. Nico