[flashrom] laptop bios

[Stefan Tauner]

On Mon, 24 Feb 2014 20:23:25 -0800 (PST)
Sheri Soltz <sherimsoltz at yahoo.com> wrote:

> But when I check the md5sum for backup.bin it is different from each previous backup.bin.  Shouldn't the md5sum of the backup stay the same, as long as the bios has not been changed?

The firmware of x86 machines is stored on flash chips.
BIOS might (wrongly) refer to either of the firmware or the flash chip.
Your Chromebook uses coreboot as a firmware which is stored in the
Winbond flash chip (W25Q64).
The flash chip is not too much different to a usb key... so it can be
modified by software (else flashrom would not make much sense).
Modern firmware uses this fact to store e.g. log files to the flash
chip, and this can produce the mismatches you are seeing.
So this might just be normal (I am not sure in this specific case
though).

Google has forked flashrom for their chromebook development and I would
suggest that you take a look at it when working on the x131e.
It can be found here
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/third_party/flashrom/
-- 
Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner