Can't get heads to boot on t430

did a fresh clone of heads
pulled and cleaned the ME blobs for xx30
built t430-hotp-maximized roms
flashed top & then bottom
upon booting, my t430 made a continuous beep with microphone and power lights blinking

flashed backup dump and the t430 boots. hardware is good.

then I tried just the t430-flash rom on the 4096kb chip only, and I get the same boot error: blank screen, blinking lights, continuous beep. heat sink fan starts up then immediately slows to a stop.

any ideas?

since the backup bios flash worked-- is there some way i could get a prebuilt t430-flash heads rom just for the purpose of testing, to confirm/deny that the rom build is the problem?

mobo has an nvidia GPU. I read this is an extra feature, not on all t430 boards. could this have something to do with my issue?

[tlaurion]

@walliams : building #1015 for coreboot 4.13 or master for coreboot 4.8.1?

[tlaurion]

mobo has an nvidia GPU. I read this is an extra feature, not on all t430 boards. could this have something to do with my issue?

most probably yes, others reporting working boards didn't specify if they were using Intel i915 only.
The current 4.8.1 coreboot configuration uses Coreboot native graphical initialization, but doesn't initialize libgfx.
Coreboot 4.13 #1015 PR is deactivating coreboot graphic initialization altogether. We might need to push something specific to support nvidia support, so your input here on what you built would be a base for @nitrosimon to bring that further!

Thanks for the report, that confirms my basic insight, where without hardware, wat I can do is limited.

Adding coreboot graphic initialization, forcing coreboot to use primary display and having libgfx into coreboot might resolve this issue.

[daringer]

Hey @walliams

you could also try https://github.com/Nitrokey/heads/tree/nitropad as reference, this is what we use inside our Nitrokey T430 Nitropads and "should" work, although they come without a discrete GPU. We'll share some more insights during this week, we especially @nitrosimon is working on it

well, we're making progress!!
the t430-flash board from the nitropad branch plus a cleaned stock 8mb flash got me into the minimal heads and then i was able to mount a usb and flash the t430 rom of the same branch, but then... back to the same boot error >:[

i'm going to retry this process with a few more roms on the internal flash step, but at least the external flash hurdle has been cleared.

thank you all for the guidance and continued support on this project.

by the way, as to the discrete nvidia gpu on my board, i am not so much interested in enabling the gpu as i am in just being able to get heads up and running with hotp verification for my librem key. goal is to run qubes, for which i don't think the gpu would offer any advantages, at least for my intended purposes. however, feel free to use me as a guinea pig to test builds on this board while i'm still figuring out what will work on the internal flash.

internal flash attempts:

nitrokey fork, nitropad branch "heads-t430-v1.3.1.rom" - failed, blinking
nitrokey fork, nitropad branch "nitropad-v1.3.1-5e5c36f.rom" - failed, blinking
nitrokey fork, master - "heads-t430-v0.2.0-957-gb017309.rom" - failed, blinking
heads master - "heads-t430-hotp-maximized-v0.2.0-1092-gfdbd9b2.rom" - failed, solid power light, blank screen

let me know if there's another build I should try that might work. i will try the coreboot 4.13 build next time i have a chance

[daringer]

Hey, yes based on the current PR #1015 the only change to do is: CONFIG_NO_GFX_INIT=n inside the coreboot config for your board, then it should work, just verified. There will be an update to this PR to coreboot 4.15 soon, which will include this fix. But keep in mind that our t430 is w/o the gpu, which might lead to some further adaptations.

The maximized builds have to be flashed externally, your ME and IFD are set to read-only, you should see this if you fire up flashrom -p internal.

The maximized builds have to be flashed externally, your ME and IFD are set to read-only, you should see this if you fire up flashrom -p internal.

ahhhh i see. i knew that it could be flashed externally, but i didn't realize that it must. good to know. one other question: is there a reason that one would want to go with the hotp-maximized build over the hotp-verification build? seems they both serve the same purpose as long as you clean the ME in the external flash, but i'm sure i'm missing something. ideally is one method preferred over the other and for what reasons?

edit: also, i just built a few boards from the 4.13 branch and they all say "g1f1539c-dirty" including the maximized build. why dirty? is this just because it is not the master branch or did something go wrong?

[icequbes1]

Hey, yes based on the current PR #1015 the only change to do is: CONFIG_NO_GFX_INIT=n inside the coreboot config for your board, then it should work, just verified. There will be an update to this PR to coreboot 4.15 soon, which will include this fix. But keep in mind that our t430 is w/o the gpu, which might lead to some further adaptations.

@daringer
Is there a workaround to having to reflash externally if we've built without the above change?

[icequbes1]

Is there a workaround to having to reflash externally if we've built without the above change?

Spoke too soon - connecting an external monitor to the VGA port shows the Whiptail interface (ERROR: GPG Keyring empty!). "x" followed by "[enter]" will get to the recovery shell.

[icequbes1]

I can confirm that the fix from @daringer to specify CONFIG_NO_GFX_INIT=n in the coreboot config resolved the "blank screen" issue on my T430 (make BOARD=t430).

@icequbes1 do you have the t430 board with the nvidia gpu? i am still not having any luck, even on the #1015 4.13 build with CONFIG_NO_GFX_INIT=n set in the coreboot config file (~/heads/config/coreboot-t430-hotp-maximized.config) i am still getting a blank screen. backlight turns on, and ctrl-alt-del reboots, so it does seem to be booting now, but not displaying

t430-flash from this branch gives me the same original boot error i had as well, so i tried the nitropad t430-flash, then internally flashed t430-hotp-verification from #1015 and same error again.

also -- i'm still unclear why all the builds from the 4.13 branch give me the tag "dirty"

[tlaurion]

@walliams : dirty means you have stuff changed locally when compared to remote branch, which would be normal since you modified ~/heads/config/coreboot-t430-hotp-maximized.config

So Heads reports the version has not clean. Hence dirty.

[icequbes1]

@walliams, No my T430 does not have the Nvidia GPU.

It is (Intel) Integrated Graphics HD 4000 (CPU is i5-3320M).

[tlaurion]

@walliams can you post the content of your whole t430-hotp-maximized coreboot config here? I could then expend it so its not in a defconfig format and check if the primary display is forced, which should, per other user reports, be Intel one.

Otherwise without a board myself, back and forths are the only solution, I'm blind here.