[coreboot] OpenBSD won't install on an x220 Thinkpad with Coreboot

James Hebden james at hebden.net.au
Fri Dec 21 08:00:58 CET 2018


On Thu, Dec 20, 2018 at 05:30:36PM -0500, Robert Milton wrote:
> I'm trying to get OpenBSD to install on an x220 Thinkpad
> with Coreboot/SeaBIOS but I'm running into two problems: the
> ethernet device doesn't work and OpenBSD doesn't detect my
> HDD. dmesg said em0 wouldn't load because the EEPROM had an
> invalid signature. I have no idea why OpenBSD doesn't see my
> HDD though. It's strange because everything works fine under
> Linux.  And I cannot seem to mount a usb drive under the
> OpenBSD installer to attach dmesg errors.

I had the same issue. Interestingly, NetBSD seemed to work just fine,
and Linux, so it is something specific to the handling of the ahci
device under the OpenBSD kernel.

I tried with both SeaBIOS and grub payloads.

iirc I was getting something along the lines of -

ahci0 at pci0 dev x function y "Intel 6 Series AHCI" rev 0x0x: msi,
unable to reset controller 

It's possible NetBSD and Linux have workarounds to reset the controller,
in the same way Linux can also bring up gbe even if you don't bake the
firmware into your image.

> 
> I originally posted this as a bug report to bug report
> mailing list but Theo said it would be better suited for
> Coreboot's and wasn't a bug in OpenBSD.
> 
> -- 
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> https://mail.coreboot.org/mailman/listinfo/coreboot



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