EC sync update can fail which will lead to unresponsive laptop

[m-iwanicki]

Component

EC firmware

Device

NovaCustom V54 14th Gen

Dasharo version

0.9.0-rc10 & 0.9.0

Dasharo Tools Suite version

2.0.0-rc2

Test case ID

No response

Brief summary

EC update made by Dasharo firmware (instead of manual) may fail

How reproducible

Unknown

How to reproduce

Happened to me with those steps:

• Start with 0.9.0-rc10 firmware
• Boot DTS 2.0.0-rc2 (version without EC update)
• Update to 0.9.0, EC should be updated automatically after restart - this part worked for me
• Boot again to DTS
• Flash 0.9.0-rc10 with flashrom
• reboot

Expected behavior

EC update by Dasharo firmware should work

Actual behavior

After fans quiet down laptop is unresponsive. All LEDs are off even with power adapter connected. The only way to power on laptop is to temporarily disconnect all power (AC and battery). After that laptop should boot with proprietary EC. This can be fixed by manually updating/installing EC fw. After this error happened to me first time then any other EC update made by Dasharo fw failed (either 0.9.0-rc10 -> 0.9.0 or 0.9.0 -> 0.9.0-rc10)

This bug can also happen when manually using flashrom i.e. sudo flashrom -p internal --ifd -i bios -w [path/to/your/coreboot.rom]

Screenshots

No response

Additional context

Happened also couple months ago when testing binary containing EC sync on NS70MU. On that laptop I noticed that:

• When AC was disconnected there was warning that said to connect AC before EC update. After doing that EC update succeeded. If AC was connected whole time then EC update failed with identical symptoms
• Dasharo fw flashes EC fw if current EC version is different than the one that Dasharo binary contains. After recovering from failed EC update and flashing different Dasharo EC fw Dasharo updated EC again but this time it succeeded.

Maybe BIOS needs one full load cycle before EC update to succeed.

Solutions you've tried

Using DTS 2.0.0-rc3 or manually updating Dasharo & EC to be the same version so Dasharo fw doesn't have to do that.

[akoskoronka]

EC sync update also failed flashing 0.9.0 from DTS 2.0.0-rc3 using flashrom, leading to a non-responsive state, where battery disconnect was the only solution. Afterwards "Proprietary EC detected!" error message was shown.

[eljejer]

I have updated NovaCustom v56 14th Gen's firmware using dts-base-image-genericx86-64.v2.0.0-rc1.wic.gz downloaded here.following the guide in this post "Instructions for BIOS update to the latest Release Candidate (RC)" of this post.

Obviously, the download page for v2.0.0-rc1, is not available anymore.

I have not seen any errors during the update of the firmware. Is this situation only applicable to DTS 2.0.0-rc2? When I updated I have used DTS 2.0.0-rc1.

Please advise: will I have to update the firmware's EC separately now?

[m-iwanicki]

@eljejer DTS 2.0.0-rc3 should update both BIOS and EC fw if you update by using 2) Update Dasharo firmware option. If you are doing it manually then safest way is to first update BIOS and then EC. If you update via interface on older DTS version or update only BIOS then EC update made by BIOS after reboot could fail.

[eljejer]

@eljejer DTS 2.0.0-rc3 should update both BIOS and EC fw if you update by using 2) Update Dasharo firmware option. If you are doing it manually then safest way is to first update BIOS and then EC. If you update via interface on older DTS version or update only BIOS then EC update made by BIOS after reboot could fail.

My current EC version = 2024-07-17_4ae73b9. So you recommend to update again with DTS v2.0.0-rc3 then?

[m-iwanicki]

There's no need, it's correct version.

[mkopec]

Fixed by https://github.com/Dasharo/coreboot/pull/577