[flashrom] IBM SurePOS 700 4800-783 support

[Stefan Tauner]

On Wed, 15 Aug 2012 08:56:34 -0400
Jason_Vannest at abercrombie.com wrote:

Hi Jason!

> Sorry Stefan,
> 
> I've been busy and our test lab is being used to do a regression right now 
> so I've not had time to try and compile and test the patch you provided.

NP, i just wanted to get sure you have received my last mail and
nothing momentous happened, because your replies were within days or
even hours before.

> I do intend to do so, give me a little more time and I'll see what I can 
> do.

We have received your other message containing the read out bios image.
It sits in the moderation queue at the moment, because we can't publish
it (it is copyrighted). Thanks for taking the time to test! What we
actually wanted to see is the output that flashrom prints to screen (or
saves to a file when one specifies the log file option -o
"logfilename").
But since you were able to read the BIOS file correctly the patch seems
to have worked at least to some extend. This is great news!
Nevertheless please send the verbose output of flashrom too.

> On the topic of IBM and help, I have been in discussion with IBM about the 
> firmware updates and they have been very adamant that we need to insure 
> that we update all the devices not just the BIOS itself.  From looking at 
> a handful of their update packages, I can see that they frequently include 
> updates for riser cards, service processors and possibly other devices 
> with the BIOS updates.  So before we implement something with flashrom we 
> would want to make sure we're not missing something that could later cause 
> us issues even if the issues are only that IBM is unhappy  because we 
> didn't follow their update procedures.

The latter would be the last thing i would worry about, but especially
the service processors might interact with the BIOS and if an update
changes the protocol that they talk with each other, then this may lead
to unbootable machines...
It is probably possible to add support for the other device to flashrom
as well, but that would certainly not be a single line change and take
way more time to implement, even if IBM provides some documentation.
Without documentation it would probably be pretty much infeasible.

-- 
Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner