BIOS update using flashrom on an UEFI system

In an UEFI based system (x86_64, Rangeley cpu), the bios bootup option
shows each UEFI partition. Where as in legacy bios mode, the bios bootup menu
would show just SSD, USB etc.
In case of UEFI system, the boot-order, boot-current etc (i.e. UEFI config data) is stored
in bios area ?

When we update bios using flashrom, we are seeing that the UEFI config data is getting lost/over-written.
Because of which, bios does not know that it is running on uefi system and probably tries to invoke
grub using legacy way, which hangs.

How can we instruct flashrom to not over-write UEFI config data in bios area.

regards
lakesh

[David Hendricks]

Hi Lakesh,
Did you ever find a solution for this? Probably the quickest solution is to
figure out where the config data resides and write to the regions around it
using a layout file.

It's an interesting problem that I suspect we'll see more often in the
future, not just with UEFI. Storage of config data on the firmware ROM is
becoming more common, and the firmware update utility of choice needs to
become more aware of what portions of the ROM are safe to overwrite.

For ChromeOS platforms, we added a blob that maps the ROM content
(flashmap, or fmap for short) so that our update scripts know which regions
of the ROM to target when updating.

I'm not sure what the best way to do this for other systems, though. AFAIK
this is all vendor-specific.

On Tue, Feb 9, 2016 at 6:21 PM,  wrote:
> In an UEFI based system (x86_64, Rangeley cpu), the bios bootup option
> shows each UEFI partition. Where as in legacy bios mode, the bios bootup
> menu
> would show just SSD, USB etc.
> In case of UEFI system, the boot-order, boot-current etc (i.e. UEFI config
> data) is stored
> in bios area ?
>
> When we update bios using flashrom, we are seeing that the UEFI config
> data is getting lost/over-written.
> Because of which, bios does not know that it is running on uefi system and
> probably tries to invoke
> grub using legacy way, which hangs.
>
> How can we instruct flashrom to not over-write UEFI config data in bios
> area.
>
> regards
> lakesh
>
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