[LinuxBIOS] Can't compile flashrom

[Shocky]

Hi,

I'm new to LinuxBios, and just looking for a way to flash the bios on an HP 
laptop without installing Windoze. None of the tricks I've found through 
Google have worked for me so far, including HP's own utility for making 
bootable usb keys.

I'm trying to compile just the flashrom component of LinuxBios from svn, but 
make gives me an error telling me that I need to install pciutils-devel and 
zlib-devel. The problem is these packages are already installed.

I extracted the little .test.c program from the Makefile, and determined that 
the linker is unable to resolve the call to pci_alloc. The problem is I don't 
know why. The header is there in /usr/include/pci/pci.h, 
and /usr/lib/libpci.a is there (but I don't know how to tell what symbols the 
library provides; reached the limit of my expertise there).

This happens on two different machines, one running Mandriva 2008.0 (the 
laptop in question), and the other Mandriva 2007.0 (my desktop pc). Any ideas 
what's going on and how to resolve it?

Shocky

[Frederico Silva]

Hello,

I'm a new member of the mailing list too, until now i was only a passive 
reader.

I have a suggestion. You can use grub to boot a floppy disk image with 
the flasher and bios. (and flash it).
Here is how 
http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_Boot_Floppydisk_Image_without_Floppy_using_GRUB

Good luck!
____________
Frederico Silva

Shocky wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm new to LinuxBios, and just looking for a way to flash the bios on an HP 
> laptop without installing Windoze. None of the tricks I've found through 
> Google have worked for me so far, including HP's own utility for making 
> bootable usb keys.
>
> I'm trying to compile just the flashrom component of LinuxBios from svn, but 
> make gives me an error telling me that I need to install pciutils-devel and 
> zlib-devel. The problem is these packages are already installed.
>
> I extracted the little .test.c program from the Makefile, and determined that 
> the linker is unable to resolve the call to pci_alloc. The problem is I don't 
> know why. The header is there in /usr/include/pci/pci.h, 
> and /usr/lib/libpci.a is there (but I don't know how to tell what symbols the 
> library provides; reached the limit of my expertise there).
>
> This happens on two different machines, one running Mandriva 2008.0 (the 
> laptop in question), and the other Mandriva 2007.0 (my desktop pc). Any ideas 
> what's going on and how to resolve it?
>
> Shocky

[Shocky]

On Sunday 25 November 2007 11:08, Frederico Silva wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm a new member of the mailing list too, until now i was only a passive
> reader.
>
> I have a suggestion. You can use grub to boot a floppy disk image with
> the flasher and bios. (and flash it).
> Here is how
> http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_Boot_Floppydisk_Image_without_Floppy_using_GRUB
>
> Good luck!
> ____________
> Frederico Silva

I don't want to get into a big OT discussion on the list (esp. being new 
here), but it looks like this just boots a dos image. I've been able to boot 
dos on a cd iso I got on allbootdisks.com, and access the HP flash utility 
(which is just a bundled version of the Phoenix bios winphlash utility) on a 
usb key, but it says it won't run in dos mode.

It will apparently (from what I've read) run at a dos command prompt within 
windoze. But windoze won't run from a cd without being installed (again 
according to what I've read), and that's what I want to avoid.

But thanks for the suggestion.

Shocky

[Frederico Silva]

Hi,

If you need a windows environment without installing it, you can try use 
a Preinstalled Environment like BartPE http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/.
I don't know how to create a BartPE under Linux (maybe with Wine...).

_______________
Frederico Silva

Shocky wrote:
> On Sunday 25 November 2007 11:08, Frederico Silva wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I'm a new member of the mailing list too, until now i was only a passive
> > reader.
> >
> > I have a suggestion. You can use grub to boot a floppy disk image with
> > the flasher and bios. (and flash it).
> > Here is how
> > http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_Boot_Floppydisk_Image_without_Floppy_using_GRUB
> >
> > Good luck!
> > ____________
> > Frederico Silva
>
> I don't want to get into a big OT discussion on the list (esp. being new 
> here), but it looks like this just boots a dos image. I've been able to boot 
> dos on a cd iso I got on allbootdisks.com, and access the HP flash utility 
> (which is just a bundled version of the Phoenix bios winphlash utility) on a 
> usb key, but it says it won't run in dos mode.
>
> It will apparently (from what I've read) run at a dos command prompt within 
> windoze. But windoze won't run from a cd without being installed (again 
> according to what I've read), and that's what I want to avoid.
>
> But thanks for the suggestion.
>
> Shocky

[ron minnich]

how's about we just figure out why flashrom won't build?

ron

[Shocky]

On Sunday 25 November 2007 19:42, ron minnich wrote:
> how's about we just figure out why flashrom won't build?
>
> ron

Yeah, that's what I was hoping for 8^). Any ideas?

[Uwe Hermann]

On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 09:34:17AM -0700, Shocky wrote:
> On Sunday 25 November 2007 19:42, ron minnich wrote:
> > how's about we just figure out why flashrom won't build?
> >
> > ron
>
> Yeah, that's what I was hoping for 8^). Any ideas?

Please post the full compile output here.

Do you have pciutils-dev and zlib-dev (or whatever it's called on your
distribution) installed?

Also, there's a Mandriva package already (don't know in which "branch"
of Mandriva though). Doesn't that work?

http://linuxbios.org/Flashrom#Installation

If all else fails, edit the Makefile to remove the check for
pciutils-dev etc. and see if it works anyway. Maybe it's just the check
which is broken.

Uwe.

[Forest Dean Feighner]

Uwe Hermann wrote:
> If all else fails, edit the Makefile to remove the check for
> pciutils-dev etc. and see if it works anyway. Maybe it's just the check
> which is broken.

I was having troubles with the check for pciutils-devel and zlib-devel
last night. Removing the dep check showed me that I had not install gcc
yet. Compiled just fine after installing gcc. This is on openSUSE.

[Shocky]

On Monday 26 November 2007 09:02, Forest Dean Feighner wrote:
> Uwe Hermann wrote:
> > If all else fails, edit the Makefile to remove the check for
> > pciutils-dev etc. and see if it works anyway. Maybe it's just the check
> > which is broken.
>
> I was having troubles with the check for pciutils-devel and zlib-devel
> last night. Removing the dep check showed me that I had not install gcc
> yet. Compiled just fine after installing gcc. This is on openSUSE.

I have gcc installed. Been compiling packages when I have to for a few years 
now.  You can see in my log where I did the test manually that it compiles 
successfully.

But it's always good to check the basics. My dad always started diagnosing 
electronics problems with "is it plugged in?". You wouldn't believe the 
number of times it wasn't 8^).

[ron minnich]

run the checker under strace please :)

ron

[Jordan Crouse]

On 26/11/07 13:30 -0800, ron minnich wrote:
> run the checker under strace please :)

Strace might be a little too verbose (thank you very much, GNU make).

Try make -n first.
> ron

[Shocky]

On Monday 26 November 2007 14:45, Jordan Crouse wrote:
> On 26/11/07 13:30 -0800, ron minnich wrote:
> > run the checker under strace please :)
>
> Strace might be a little too verbose (thank you very much, GNU make).
>
> Try make -n first.
> > ron

make -n just shows me the command I already know the make is failing on, the 
one where it tries to compile and link .test.c. With the pciutils dependency 
removed, it shows me the gcc -o with all the .o files and ending 
with '-lpci -lz -static'. I don't think there's any useful info there.

Shocky

[ron minnich]

let's keep this simple :-)

I am getting mixed up

#include <pci/pci.h> int main(){struct pci_access *p = pci_alloc();}

strace -o /tmp/fail cc thing.c -lpci -lz

and tell me what shakes.

ron

[Russell Whitaker]

On Mon, 26 Nov 2007, ron minnich wrote:
> let's keep this simple :-)

Thought I'd try it and see what happens. Went to website, downloaded
"latest linuxbios v2", and found flashrom missing. Downloaded -2986
and found it.

"make" complied flashrom with no errors.

Box here is slackware 12.0 with a newer kernel. gcc is now gcc-4.2.2.
Is there anything else that would help?

Russ

[Shocky]

On Monday 26 November 2007 16:04, ron minnich wrote:
> let's keep this simple :-)
>
> I am getting mixed up
>
> #include <pci/pci.h> int main(){struct pci_access *p = pci_alloc();}
>
> strace -o /tmp/fail cc thing.c -lpci -lz
>
> and tell me what shakes.
>
> ron

Okay, see attached.

Shocky

[ron minnich]

strace -f, thanks :-)

ron

[Shocky]

On Tuesday 27 November 2007 08:56, ron minnich wrote:
> strace -f, thanks :-)
>
> ron

Okay, here it is gzipped.

Shocky

[ron minnich]

So according to this trace the build succeeded.

So what's wrong?

ron

[Shocky]

On Tuesday 27 November 2007 16:01, ron minnich wrote:
> So according to this trace the build succeeded.
>
> So what's wrong?
>
> ron

It won't link. The linker always returns the error:

undefined reference to 'pci_alloc'

Shocky

[ron minnich]

On Nov 27, 2007 3:17 PM, Shocky  wrote:
> It won't link. The linker always returns the error:
>
> undefined reference to 'pci_alloc'

btw, on the next strace, do -s 1024 :-)

I notice it seems to be linking with a .a instead of a .o for libpci.
did you do an nm on that library? I wonder if you have some weird out
of rev version.

The library paths it is using look odd as well, almost like it's cross
compiling? that's not the case is it?
ron

[Shocky]

On Tuesday 27 November 2007 16:28, ron minnich wrote:
> On Nov 27, 2007 3:17 PM, Shocky  wrote:
> > It won't link. The linker always returns the error:
> >
> > undefined reference to 'pci_alloc'
>
> btw, on the next strace, do -s 1024 :-)
>
> I notice it seems to be linking with a .a instead of a .o for libpci.
> did you do an nm on that library? I wonder if you have some weird out
> of rev version.

Yeah, it is libpci.a. Is that not what it should be?
> The library paths it is using look odd as well, almost like it's cross
> compiling? that's not the case is it?

Not as far as I know.
> ron

Shocky

[ron minnich]

gcc -o thing thing.c /usr/lib/libpci.a -lz

see what happens.

ron

[Shocky]

On Tuesday 27 November 2007 17:33, ron minnich wrote:
> gcc -o thing thing.c /usr/lib/libpci.a -lz
>
> see what happens.
>
> ron

Aha, that ran successfully. I can even run the thing program, which does 
nothing other than give me a return code of 8. Seems like progress. Does it 
give you a clue what's wrong with the linker on Mandriva?

Shocky

[ron minnich]

On Nov 28, 2007 7:53 AM, Shocky  wrote:
> Aha, that ran successfully. I can even run the thing program, which does
> nothing other than give me a return code of 8. Seems like progress. Does it
> give you a clue what's wrong with the linker on Mandriva?

I can only tell you, from the strace, that the mandriva guys seem to
want to be clever, and fail badly, I don't know what they're doing,
but it's not working very well :-)

ron

[Russell Whitaker]

In a prior email I wrote "libz and libz.so."  It should have been
"libz.a and libz.so." sorry.

On Wed, 28 Nov 2007, Shocky wrote:
> On Tuesday 27 November 2007 17:33, ron minnich wrote:
> > gcc -o thing thing.c /usr/lib/libpci.a -lz
> >
> > see what happens.
> >
> > ron
>
> Aha, that ran successfully. I can even run the thing program, which does
> nothing other than give me a return code of 8. Seems like progress. Does it
> give you a clue what's wrong with the linker on Mandriva?

To see what the linker is doing, try this:
     gcc -o thing thing.c -Xlinker --verbose -lpci -lz

The results you get should look alot like this:

GNU ld (Linux/GNU Binutils) 2.17.50.0.17.20070615
   Supported emulations:
    elf_i386
    i386linux
    elf_x86_64
using internal linker script:
==================================================
/* Script for -z combreloc: combine and sort reloc sections */
OUTPUT_FORMAT("elf32-i386", "elf32-i386",
          "elf32-i386")
OUTPUT_ARCH(i386)
ENTRY(_start)
SEARCH_DIR("/usr/i486-slackware-linux/lib"); SEARCH_DIR("/usr/local/lib"); SEARCH_DIR("/lib"); SEARCH_DIR("/usr/lib");
SECTIONS
{
   [..]
}

==================================================
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../crt1.o succeeded
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../crt1.o
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../crti.o succeeded
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../crti.o
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/crtbegin.o succeeded
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/crtbegin.o
attempt to open /tmp/ccyKMHNi.o succeeded
/tmp/ccyKMHNi.o
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libpci.so failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libpci.a failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libpci.so failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libpci.a failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libpci.so failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libpci.a succeeded
(/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libpci.a)access.o
(/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libpci.a)dump.o
(/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libpci.a)names.o
(/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libpci.a)sysfs.o
(/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libpci.a)proc.o
(/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libpci.a)i386-ports.o
(/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libpci.a)generic.o
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libz.so failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libz.a failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libz.so failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libz.a failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libz.so succeeded
-lz (/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libz.so)
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libgcc.so failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libgcc.a succeeded
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libgcc_s.so failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libgcc_s.a failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libgcc_s.so failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libgcc_s.a failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libgcc_s.so succeeded
-lgcc_s (/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libgcc_s.so)
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libc.so failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libc.a failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libc.so failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libc.a failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libc.so succeeded
opened script file /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libc.so
opened script file /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libc.so
attempt to open /lib/libc.so.6 succeeded
/lib/libc.so.6
attempt to open /usr/lib/libc_nonshared.a succeeded
(/usr/lib/libc_nonshared.a)elf-init.oS
attempt to open /lib/ld-linux.so.2 succeeded
/lib/ld-linux.so.2
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libgcc.so failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libgcc.a succeeded
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libgcc_s.so failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libgcc_s.a failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libgcc_s.so failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/libgcc_s.a failed
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libgcc_s.so succeeded
-lgcc_s (/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../libgcc_s.so)
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/crtend.o succeeded
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/crtend.o
attempt to open /usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../crtn.o succeeded
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.2.2/../../../crtn.o
ld-linux.so.2 needed by /lib/libc.so.6
found ld-linux.so.2 at /lib/ld-linux.so.2

Russ

[Shocky]

On Monday 26 November 2007 14:30, ron minnich wrote:
> run the checker under strace please :)
>
> ron

When you say "the checker", are you referring to the 'ld test.o' command that 
shows the linking problem, or something else?

Shocky

[Shocky]

On Monday 26 November 2007 12:52, Uwe Hermann wrote:
> Please post the full compile output here.
>
> Do you have pciutils-dev and zlib-dev (or whatever it's called on your
> distribution) installed?
>
> Also, there's a Mandriva package already (don't know in which "branch"
> of Mandriva though). Doesn't that work?
>
> http://linuxbios.org/Flashrom#Installation
>
> If all else fails, edit the Makefile to remove the check for
> pciutils-dev etc. and see if it works anyway. Maybe it's just the check
> which is broken.
>
> Uwe.

Yes, pciutils-devel and zlib-devel are installed.

There is no package Mandriva package in any of the standard repositories named 
flashrom or linuxbios, and no packages that contain any file whose name 
contains the string "flashrom". This is the first thing I tried before 
resorting to trying a build.

Here's the output from when I compiled and tried to link the test program 
extracted from the Makefile, and a few lines to show that the files are there 
that should be.

[flashrom]$ cat test.c
#include <pci/pci.h>
struct pci_access *pacc;
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{ pacc = pci_alloc(); return 0; }
[flashrom]$
[flashrom]$ gcc -c test.c
[flashrom]$ ld -lpci -lz -static test.o
ld: warning: cannot find entry symbol _start; defaulting to 0000000008048094
test.o: In function `main':
test.c:(.text+0x12): undefined reference to `pci_alloc'
[flashrom]$ ls -l /usr/lib/libpci.a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 138094 2007-08-14 16:11 /usr/lib/libpci.a
[flashrom]$ ls -l /usr/include/pci/pci.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6479 2007-08-14 16:11 /usr/include/pci/pci.h
[flashrom]$ grep pci_alloc /usr/include/pci/pci.h
struct pci_access *pci_alloc(void);

I tried removing the pciutils dependency from the all target in Makefile, 
though I didn't expect this to work (if it can't find the symbol in the test 
file, it's not going to find the symbol in the real program, is it?). This 
gives me a different ld error:

/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lc

Shocky

[ron minnich]

On Nov 26, 2007 8:34 AM, Shocky  wrote:
> On Sunday 25 November 2007 19:42, ron minnich wrote:
> > how's about we just figure out why flashrom won't build?
> >
> > ron
>
> Yeah, that's what I was hoping for 8^). Any ideas?

send me the output from a failed build.

ron

[Shocky]

On Monday 26 November 2007 13:03, ron minnich wrote:
> On Nov 26, 2007 8:34 AM, Shocky  wrote:
> > On Sunday 25 November 2007 19:42, ron minnich wrote:
> > > how's about we just figure out why flashrom won't build?
> > >
> > > ron
> >
> > Yeah, that's what I was hoping for 8^). Any ideas?
>
> send me the output from a failed build.
>
> ron

It just says:

Checking for pciutils and zlib... not found.

Please install pciutils-devel and zlib-devel.

Nothing more informative.

Shocky

[Stefan Reinauer]

* Shocky  [071126 21:37]:
> It just says:
>
> Checking for pciutils and zlib... not found.
>
> Please install pciutils-devel and zlib-devel.
>
> Nothing more informative.

What pciutils, pciutils-devel, zlib and zlib-devel package versions do
you have installed on your system?

[Shocky]

On Tuesday 27 November 2007 02:46, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
> Shocky  [071126 21:37]:
> > It just says:
> >
> > Checking for pciutils and zlib... not found.
> >
> > Please install pciutils-devel and zlib-devel.
> >
> > Nothing more informative.
>
> What pciutils, pciutils-devel, zlib and zlib-devel package versions do
> you have installed on your system?

pciutils and pciutils-devel are version 2.2.6 release 3mdv2008.0. zlib is 
actually zlib1. zlib1 and zlib1-devel are version 1.2.3 release 8mdv2008.0.

That's on the laptop where I really want to build it. I also get the same 
error my my 2007.0 desktop, where pciutils is at veresion 2.2.3, and zlib1 is 
at the same version 1.2.3.

I'm wondering if I should pull down the source rpms for these and see what's 
inside them. I saw someone mention the other day on another thread that some 
distros break linuxbios. Maybe Mandriva is one of them.

Shocky

[ron minnich]

I have yet to see anyone try my trivial trick on mandriva which,
again, is something like this:

#include <pci.h> main(){return pci_alloc();}

cc a.c -lpci -lz

and tell us what happens.

ron

[Corey Osgood]

Shocky wrote:
> On Tuesday 27 November 2007 02:46, Stefan Reinauer wrote:
> > Shocky  [071126 21:37]:
> > > It just says:
> > >
> > > Checking for pciutils and zlib... not found.
> > >
> > > Please install pciutils-devel and zlib-devel.
> > >
> > > Nothing more informative.
> >
> > What pciutils, pciutils-devel, zlib and zlib-devel package versions do
> > you have installed on your system?
>
> pciutils and pciutils-devel are version 2.2.6 release 3mdv2008.0. zlib is 
> actually zlib1. zlib1 and zlib1-devel are version 1.2.3 release 8mdv2008.0.

Perhaps this can help?

http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=flashrom

The rpms are there, for immediate use, and also the maintainer's contact
info. Perhaps he knows something we don't (but should). Source is there
as well to see if there are any differences, but there are too many
people on the repos at the moment, I'm getting kicked.
> That's on the laptop where I really want to build it. I also get the same 
> error my my 2007.0 desktop, where pciutils is at veresion 2.2.3, and zlib1 is 
> at the same version 1.2.3.
>
> I'm wondering if I should pull down the source rpms for these and see what's 
> inside them. I saw someone mention the other day on another thread that some 
> distros break linuxbios. Maybe Mandriva is one of them.
>
> Shocky

If the threads you were looking at dealt with stack check failure, it
doesn't affect flashrom.

-Corey

[Shocky]

On Tuesday 27 November 2007 08:57, Corey Osgood wrote:
...
> http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=flashrom
>
> The rpms are there, for immediate use, and also the maintainer's contact
> info. Perhaps he knows something we don't (but should). Source is there
> as well to see if there are any differences, but there are too many
> people on the repos at the moment, I'm getting kicked.

Oh, that's why urpmi is not picking this up for me, these are cooker 
(unstable, development version) packages. Installing cooker rpms on a regular 
Mandriva install is almost guaranteed to trash your system (often pulls in 
new versions of glibc and stuff like that).

But building and installing a cooker srpm is relatively safe. Usually just 
fails to build if the dependencies are incompatible. I'll give it a shot, 
though I suspect it will fail on the same linker error if not on something 
else.

...
> If the threads you were looking at dealt with stack check failure, it
> doesn't affect flashrom.

Not sure, but that might have been the one.
> -Corey

Shocky

[Shocky]

On Sunday 25 November 2007 14:38, Frederico Silva wrote:
> Hi,
>
> If you need a windows environment without installing it, you can try use
> a Preinstalled Environment like BartPE http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/.
> I don't know how to create a BartPE under Linux (maybe with Wine...).
>
> Frederico Silva

If I get desperate I might try that. Except that I don't have Win 2K or XP. 
The laptop came with Vista, which for reasons I won't get into I was forced 
to use for three weeks before I was able to replace it with Linux. I don't 
wish to ever go through that experience again. If you haven't had the 
misfortune of using Vista, it really is as bad as people have been saying. 
Those horror stories are not exaggerated. But this is way OT, and I don't 
want to wear out my welcome on this list too quickly 8^).

Shocky

[Corey Osgood]

Shocky wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm new to LinuxBios, and just looking for a way to flash the bios on an HP 
> laptop without installing Windoze. None of the tricks I've found through 
> Google have worked for me so far, including HP's own utility for making 
> bootable usb keys.

Some HP laptops these days use SPI flash, which flashrom can do only in
one special situation (afaik), Gigabyte m57sli. Also, the flash may have
protection coming from the embedded controller or GPIO lines, which
flashrom knows nothing about.

Last time I flashed my HP laptop's bios, I took a windows 98se iso,
added the bios and flash utility to it with an iso editor, and then
burned and booted from it. I ran the utility through dos, and it worked
fine. This should also work fine with a custom cd and the floppy
emulation, with a 98se boot disk as the source. K3b can do the dirty work.
> I'm trying to compile just the flashrom component of LinuxBios from svn, but 
> make gives me an error telling me that I need to install pciutils-devel and 
> zlib-devel. The problem is these packages are already installed.
>
> I extracted the little .test.c program from the Makefile, and determined that 
> the linker is unable to resolve the call to pci_alloc. The problem is I don't 
> know why. The header is there in /usr/include/pci/pci.h, 
> and /usr/lib/libpci.a is there (but I don't know how to tell what symbols the 
> library provides; reached the limit of my expertise there).
>
> This happens on two different machines, one running Mandriva 2008.0 (the 
> laptop in question), and the other Mandriva 2007.0 (my desktop pc). Any ideas 
> what's going on and how to resolve it?

Sorry, can't be of much help.

-Corey

[Shocky]

On Sunday 25 November 2007 11:45, Corey Osgood wrote:
...
> Some HP laptops these days use SPI flash, which flashrom can do only in
> one special situation (afaik), Gigabyte m57sli. Also, the flash may have
> protection coming from the embedded controller or GPIO lines, which
> flashrom knows nothing about.
>
> Last time I flashed my HP laptop's bios, I took a windows 98se iso,
> added the bios and flash utility to it with an iso editor, and then
> burned and booted from it. I ran the utility through dos, and it worked
> fine. This should also work fine with a custom cd and the floppy
> emulation, with a 98se boot disk as the source. K3b can do the dirty work.

...
> Sorry, can't be of much help.
>
> -Corey

Yeah, I know there's a good chance that it won't work. But I'm willing to give 
it a shot if I can. HP is stingy with h/w info, and I haven't yet figured out 
the secret handshake to open the case and see who's m/b it is. I've been able 
to determine that it uses NVidia MCP51, which has a "?" under the supported 
column. Maybe I can at least contribute to getting it supported.

Shocky

[David Hendricks]

On Nov 25, 2007 8:24 AM, Shocky  wrote:
> I'm trying to compile just the flashrom component of LinuxBios from svn,
> but make gives me an error telling me that I need to install pciutils-devel
> and zlib-devel. The problem is these packages are already installed.
>
> I extracted the little .test.c program from the Makefile, and determined
> that the linker is unable to resolve the call to pci_alloc. The problem is I
> don't know why.

I've had similar issues after upgrading my compilation toolchain incorrectly
and will wager a guess that the issues you are facing have more to do with
your distribution than with flashrom. A few questions that come to mind --
Have you recently upgraded system packages such as libc, gcc, etc? Also, are
you using crosstool? Do you have all the -devel packages installed which
distros like Debian and Redhat tend to omit.

Also, I think Mandriva / SuSE / Redhat / etc. have features tucked away
which can help you to upgrade your whole distro from "basic" to "developer"
or something to automagically install all -devel packages and libraries. If
you have the hard disk space available, you may wish to try something like
that just to be certain there's no easy fix.

On Nov 25, 2007 8:24 AM, Shocky  wrote:
> The header is there in /usr/include/pci/pci.h,
> and /usr/lib/libpci.a is there (but I don't know how to tell what symbols
> the library provides; reached the limit of my expertise there).

nm is your friend here ;-)

[Shocky]

On Tuesday 27 November 2007 15:50, David Hendricks wrote:
> I've had similar issues after upgrading my compilation toolchain
> incorrectly and will wager a guess that the issues you are facing have more
> to do with your distribution than with flashrom. A few questions that come
> to mind -- Have you recently upgraded system packages such as libc, gcc,
> etc? Also, are you using crosstool? Do you have all the -devel packages
> installed which distros like Debian and Redhat tend to omit.

Yeah, it does seem to be something with this distro, since others can build it 
successfully.
> Also, I think Mandriva / SuSE / Redhat / etc. have features tucked away
> which can help you to upgrade your whole distro from "basic" to "developer"
> or something to automagically install all -devel packages and libraries. If
> you have the hard disk space available, you may wish to try something like
> that just to be certain there's no easy fix.

They used to have an install option to make it a developer workstation, which 
I did select when I installed 2007.0 on my desktop. I've successfully built 
quite a few packages on it without any problems like this. I haven't done any 
recent updates.

On the laptop, where it's 2008.0, they've eliminated that developer option to 
simplify the installer. But I've manually installed everything I need for 
building packages. I've built a few packages and this is the first I've seen 
something like this.

It's odd how the same problem occurs in two completely different versions of 
Mandriva. But I'll have to check on the Mandriva lists and see what they say.
> On Nov 25, 2007 8:24 AM, Shocky  wrote:
> > The header is there in /usr/include/pci/pci.h,
> > and /usr/lib/libpci.a is there (but I don't know how to tell what symbols
> > the library provides; reached the limit of my expertise there).
>
> nm is your friend here ;-)

Thanks, I knew there had to be a command that would do this. This just deepens 
the mystery further. nm tells me that within /usr/lib/libpci.a access.o 
defines the external symbol "00000760 T pci_alloc". So if nm can see it, why 
can't ld see it?

Shocky

[Peter Stuge]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 05:19:01PM -0700, Shocky wrote:
> Thanks, I knew there had to be a command that would do this. This
> just deepens the mystery further. nm tells me that within
> /usr/lib/libpci.a access.o defines the external symbol
> "00000760 T pci_alloc". So if nm can see it, why can't ld see it?

What if you link with the archive manually:

ld -o flashrom file1.o file2.o /usr/lib/libpci.a

(ie don't use -lpci)

//Peter

[Russell Whitaker]

On Wed, 28 Nov 2007, Peter Stuge wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 05:19:01PM -0700, Shocky wrote:
> > Thanks, I knew there had to be a command that would do this. This
> > just deepens the mystery further. nm tells me that within
> > /usr/lib/libpci.a access.o defines the external symbol
> > "00000760 T pci_alloc". So if nm can see it, why can't ld see it?
>
> What if you link with the archive manually:
>
> ld -o flashrom file1.o file2.o /usr/lib/libpci.a
>
> (ie don't use -lpci)

I'm a little slow. It took me an hour to find the answer but now that I've
found it, the answer is simple:

It's not libpci.a, it's a missing zlib package. It contains libz and 
libz.so. In the Makefile the flags passed to the linker are " -lpci -lz"

Russ

[Peter Stuge]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 08:23:07PM -0800, Russell Whitaker wrote:
> It's not libpci.a, it's a missing zlib package. It contains libz
> and libz.so. In the Makefile the flags passed to the linker are
> " -lpci -lz"

Does the zlib package really contain a file called libz ? Where?

Anyway, libz.so is the shared library and is no good here, you need a
libz.a because flashrom is statically linked. (The -static option.)

//Peter

[Shocky]

On Wednesday 28 November 2007 06:19, Peter Stuge wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 08:23:07PM -0800, Russell Whitaker wrote:
> > It's not libpci.a, it's a missing zlib package. It contains libz
> > and libz.so. In the Makefile the flags passed to the linker are
> > " -lpci -lz"
>
> Does the zlib package really contain a file called libz ? Where?
>
> Anyway, libz.so is the shared library and is no good here, you need a
> libz.a because flashrom is statically linked. (The -static option.)
>
> //Peter

I have both /usr/lib/libz.a and /usr/lib/libz.so, as well 
as /usr/include/zlib.h.

Also, the little test program extracted from the Makefile doesn't use libz, 
unless it's buried somewhere. But it's specifically the pci_alloc call from 
pciutils that it refuses to link.

Shocky

[Shocky]

On Tuesday 27 November 2007 19:52, Peter Stuge wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2007 at 05:19:01PM -0700, Shocky wrote:
> > Thanks, I knew there had to be a command that would do this. This
> > just deepens the mystery further. nm tells me that within
> > /usr/lib/libpci.a access.o defines the external symbol
> > "00000760 T pci_alloc". So if nm can see it, why can't ld see it?
>
> What if you link with the archive manually:
>
> ld -o flashrom file1.o file2.o /usr/lib/libpci.a
>
> (ie don't use -lpci)
>
> //Peter

That gives a huge list of undefined references, trying to resolve all the 
symbols referenced by all the files inside libpci.

Shocky

[LinuxBIOS] Can't compile flashrom: SOLVED

[Shocky]

On Sunday 25 November 2007 09:24, Shocky wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm new to LinuxBios, and just looking for a way to flash the bios on an HP
> laptop without installing Windoze. None of the tricks I've found through
> Google have worked for me so far, including HP's own utility for making
> bootable usb keys.
>
> I'm trying to compile just the flashrom component of LinuxBios from svn,
> but make gives me an error telling me that I need to install pciutils-devel
> and zlib-devel. The problem is these packages are already installed.
>
> I extracted the little .test.c program from the Makefile, and determined
> that the linker is unable to resolve the call to pci_alloc. The problem is
> I don't know why. The header is there in /usr/include/pci/pci.h,
> and /usr/lib/libpci.a is there (but I don't know how to tell what symbols
> the library provides; reached the limit of my expertise there).
>
> This happens on two different machines, one running Mandriva 2008.0 (the
> laptop in question), and the other Mandriva 2007.0 (my desktop pc). Any
> ideas what's going on and how to resolve it?
> Shocky
>
> These are my opinions. Get your own.

I finally tracked down the problem, and it had nothing to do with libpci.a or 
libzlib1.a, except for the fact that static linking is used.

Mandriva, both 2007 and 2008, has a package called glibc-static-devel which is 
required to do static linking. I guess this is the first time I've tried to 
build a package that used static linking. The clue was the reference to not 
being able to find "-lc". libc.a is part of this package. Once I urpmi'ed 
this package, flashrom built successfully.

I wonder if someone could modify the Makefile message for this possibility, 
something like in the attached patch.

Anyway, thanks to all those who helped me resolve this issue.

Shocky

[LinuxBIOS] Can't compile flashrom: SOLVED

[Stefan Reinauer]

Shocky wrote:
> I finally tracked down the problem, and it had nothing to do with libpci.a or 
> libzlib1.a, except for the fact that static linking is used.
>
> Mandriva, both 2007 and 2008, has a package called glibc-static-devel which is 
> required to do static linking. I guess this is the first time I've tried to 
> build a package that used static linking. The clue was the reference to not 
> being able to find "-lc". libc.a is part of this package. Once I urpmi'ed 
> this package, flashrom built successfully.

This looks like a dependency problem of your distribution. You might
want to report it to them to get it fixed.
> I wonder if someone could modify the Makefile message for this possibility, 
> something like in the attached patch.
>
> Anyway, thanks to all those who helped me resolve this issue.

Thanks for the insight.

Stefan