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Foxconn Releases Test BIOS Fixing Linux Crashes
Ryan1984 writes "Only a week after the bad press coverage regarding the Linux-related bugs in a number of motherboards released by Foxconn (which turned out to be the AMI BIOS that several board makers use), Foxconn is the first vendor out with a publicly released test patch that fixes the bulk of the problems, allowing kernel 2.6.26 to run well on the afflicted boards. The remaining issues appear to either be kernel bugs in builds earlier than 2.6.26, issues with the Intel chipset itself, or minor annoyances that Foxconn is still working to resolve. Foxconn representative Heart Zhang has posted on the Ubuntu forums (where the situation began), apologizing for the issues, thanking Foxconn customers and the community at-large for their feedback, and promising that Foxconn will take Linux support and testing seriously, going forward."
Will it run Linux?
Seriously, kudos to them for taking ownership and addressing this so quickly. I've seen some vendors ignore hardware issues if they hear the world Linux.
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Wait, Slashdot told me that Foxconn was in the hole for Microsoft, purposely sabotaging Linux so Windows can live on! But now they're releasing a fix? That's not sabotage!
Help me out here, Slashdot!
"Hey Michael Dell, when are you gonna fix all the disabled HPETs in your laptops? Hell, when I checked for syntax errors in the DSDT code I found 26 of them! And it's only set up to work with different Windows models, nothing else!!! This is unacceptable! ... Hey.... Hey come back here - don't walk away when I'm talking to you!!!!"
Sadly, this is the truth, and if I could make one wish, it would be that computer makers not make their BIOS code such a damn secret. Dell uses a Phoenix BIOS with an unknown compression set up, and they seem to be extremely secretive about it. (Anyone here of the "delldeco" app? That's gone now, because Dell said so.) I'm also glad that EFI is starting to be used in some motherboard manufacturers.
This is very clever sabotage. Now Foxconn is trying to convince Linux users that we should rush out and buy from them.
Once we build all our rigs with Foxconn motherboards, they trigger the new dormant BIOS bug that destroys all Linux systems.
The only way to repair the BIOS at that point will be a patch that can only be installed from Microsoft BOB, and will come shipped in a shrink-wrapped CD case that can only be opened by throwing a chair at it.
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This whole soap opera, which probably had more to do with copy and paste laziness than conspiracy theories, blew up out of proportions and gave Foxconn a lot of reasons to believe that Linux users are crazy zealots. Yes, I know that the users who actually harassed Foxconn with "OMG microsoft payed you!!!" emails are just a small part of the Linux userbase, but I'd kinda understand if Foxconn took Linux less seriously after that.
The fact that they're now going as far as writing about the patch in the Ubuntu Forums shows that they consider the Linux userbase large and important enough to be worried about the bad press, even though most of the "bad press" was grossly exaggerated. Not-so-many years ago, a company could dismiss the complaints as "nonsense zealotry" with no worries and no financial negative impact whatsoever. Foxcoon seems to believe that this is not the case now.
So, from a "relevance of Linux nowadays" point of view, I consider this to be a very good sign.
I've said this before about ATI: When you get a bunch of angry people together and complain about a product, you typically get the results you want.
No company wants to look bad, even to a minority of people. Because it often only takes a minority of people to completely trash a companies reputation, especially in such a competitive market like motherboards.
So if you know of any other manufacturers who have poor Linux support, don't be scared to send them a letter about it and to tell other people who use Linux about your problems with the manufacturer. You might end up afflicting positive change in the long run.
Great news, that's fantastic. I wonder what caused the problem in the first place?
Anyhow, I wonder what happened to that bitter person in Foxconn's tech support? Hopefully he will be taking things more seriously next time as well.
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Quotes from the article:
So not just in this one high publicity case, but on all of their motherboards.
I would say you got what you want here. Time will tell.
I'd say they got this one done too. That's pretty public.
Yes, it's lame that it was broken but now it's fixed. One week is pretty quick for a BIOS revision spin. Maybe it's OK to cut them some slack on this one now.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
something i would say would be best served by building a standard compliant bios first, and then add fixes for windows idiosyncrasies.
the way it seems to go these days is, build for microsoft products, then try and re-patch for everything else...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
these guys really didn't have to EVER fix this, much less a week later. if all hardware manufacturers were this responsive the world of technology would be a better place.
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use freedos...
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Foxconn is probably just doing this to avoid negative publicity, despite the fact that BIOSes shouldn't be running any code specific to Linux, due to specific decisions by the kernel developers.
Quoting from an actual kernel developer:
Informative? That's pure speculation.
More likely, they simply didn't go out of their way to support Linux. When they buy a BIOS it comes with default DSDT tables that of coarse don't work on their specific board, it's very possible that they fixed the Windows tables and ignored the rest.
But of coarse, mere incompetence doesn't make for a good Two Minutes Hate. Linux zealots say they love UNIX, but they really just love to hate Microsoft.
Well, as most linux users are tech-savy, they are often being asked advice by less tech-savy people e.g.
-- What do you think about this PC? Shall I buy it?
*looks through the specs*
Foxconn Mobo? Utter trash! Don't buy it!
I do think that linux users are not many, but we are influential for sure.
Ryan1984's post makes it sound like a generic AMI BIOS problem with Linux ... I don't think this is the case. AMIBIOS runs well on Linux generically (it's on Sun Microsystems servers, the Asus EeePC & EeeBox, which all work with Linux) so this is probably Foxconn introducing a problem when they ported the BIOS to their boards.
Board manufacturers like Foxconn get a development kit from the BIOS manufacturer then port it to their platform. If Foxconn made a BIOS fix for Windows then didn't test it with Linux, this would cause the issue. A similar situation would be if a company made a variation of a Linux distro for their products but broke somethign that worked generically in the original distro.
I think the community response worked great for getting Foxconn to pay attention to Linux. They saw their business & reputation threatened and are trying to fix the problem.
Willy - Take a look at what the original poster at Ubuntu forums said:
Ubuntu forum thread. Starts at post #114.
If he is correct in what he writes, then it doesn't seem much like speculation.
Perhaps if someone else has linkage to a sound refutation of his claims, it would be a good thing to post here. I've seen comments that TheAlmightyCthulu's claims were 'debunked', but the comments didn't say where, or have links.
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
They didn't actually do anything dirty, they simply didn't do anything.
The problem is that the ACPI tables are handled according to the operating system installed and when the BIOS checked that linux was in use, it provided a null table. This is not because they purposely broke something, but because they failed to check the bios and follow through on it.
Evidently, and this is mostly my opinion, FoxxCon had no idea how much of a market Linux actually has or appears to have and took others at their word that it is too small to worry about. So they took a stock bios, made a few tweaks for the markets they thought would drive their sales and neglected to do anything about Linux. After they saw the response, they quickly and painstakingly got a workaround out and reversed their position because of the potential market size.
I over simplified the process there, there is a post obove this that goes into a good amount of detail. But it is more that they did nothing then that they did something dirty.
Yeah. This also seems to be an example of a more general phenomenon with Linux support, which is that the same company will make completely contradictory statements about their own Linux support. In the earlier slashdot story, someone from Foxconn is directly quoted as saying 'it doesn't support Linux;' now they say they always intended to support Linux. The truth is probably that they never even thought about Linux support, and then when the issue was brought to their attention random representatives started saying random things off the cuff.
I've had a similar experience with Amazon's MP3 store. If you want to buy entire albums (as opposed to individual tracks), you have to use special downloading software that they supply. The software was initially only available in Windows and Mac versions, but pretty quickly they brought out Linux versions as well. Nowadays when you use your Linux box to shop for albumbs on their site, if you don't have the software installed your browser will detect that, and detect your OS as linux, and they'll generate a page for you offering links to download a linux version of the downloader. In fact, they even have it available in multiple versions for different linux distros. However, the linux downloader has been pretty buggy for me (and was also hard to get working properly on x64). I've had it working, then it broke, etc. I've done two calls to Amazon's tech support about this, and in both cases, the initial reaction was to tell me to do a bunch of stuff (with the usual confusion because the Indian tech support person gives Windows+IE instructions, and has never heard of Linux), and then when that didn't help they checked with someone else, who told them Linux wasn't supported. Never mind that they've had Linux versions of the software up on the site for months now.
I think part of the problem is that so many people in the hardware and software industries live in a 100%-Windows environment. It honestly never even occurs to them that anyone is running any other OS. (In the case of Foxconn, they're not making mac-compatible boards, so it's probably true that 99% of their boards are being used with Windows.) Then when the issue comes up, they just deal with it off the cuff. It's like asking them what their policy is on recycling cardboard -- they probably don't have one, and they don't see why it's important.
Another problem may be that in a Windows monoculture environment, many people don't understand what a standard really is. They think Windows and Word and IE are standards. Instead of developing for the relevant standard, some PHB makes the decision that they're going to target something proprietary, calling that a "standard," and they think of it as extra work to add support for anything else -- when in fact, it would have made more sense just to support the standard properly in the first place.
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What are you worried about, MS changing the DOS API or something? ;-)
It wasn't just that the table was wrong, there was specific code in the BIOS to point to a a bad table.
This phrase, 'Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence', is absolutely a darkside distraction.
You've heard it so much over the years, that you start to believe it.
It's a *great* cover for darkside machinations.
Incompetence definitely exists, but to let yourself be deluded into thinking that bad things are due to incompetence is to show your own incompetence as a sentient lifeform.
Assume malice first, and search for proof of incompetence.
In this case, specific code was in the BIOS that was malicious.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Well, it is definitely written into the APCI 2.0 specs. When implemented, the bios can check the OS running and give specific tables to the OS that ease compliance and nuances that are different among other operating systems.
If this is the case in which it happened that way, then it can be as simple as other mainboard manufacturers not using specific DSDT tables or referring all non recognized or handled returns as NT and providing NT versions of the DSDT tables. When Foxxcom's programmer decided not to acknowledge linux and/or forgot to point it back to the windows tables, we see an issue that is specific to one instance and manufacturer.
Make no mistake, they didn't write anything specific into the bios to check for linux. That is already there and part of the spec. Failing to handle the return properly is a mistake but it doesn't imply the malice accusations that are going around. And no, this first appearance doesn't mean it can't happen with the other manufacturers, it just means that it hasn't because they did something different or were more thorough. Linux mimics windows in a lot of ways on these levels and for the most part, can handle the windows DSDT returns. If a mainboad simply passes the windows tables on a linux return, you would likely never know the difference without the source or decompiling the bios.
I'm surprised noone is comparing this saga to the AARD scandal that ultimately resulted in Microsoft having to pay a settlement to Caldera. you can read about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code but the case was about encrypted & obfuscated code inserted in Windows 3.1 to detect DR-DOS and preventing Windows from running on it. Internal Microsoft memos revealed the intention of the code: At one point, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates sent a memo to a number of employees, reading "You never sent me a response on the question of what things an app would do that would make it run with MSDOS and not run with DR-DOS. Is there [sic] feature they have that might get in our way?"[1] Microsoft Senior Vice President Brad Silverberg later sent another memo, reading "What the [user] is supposed to do is feel uncomfortable, and when he has bugs, suspect that the problem is DR-DOS and then go out to buy MS-DOS"[1] Later, after DR-DOS had been purchased by Novell and renamed "Novell DOS", Co-President Jim Allchin stated in a memo, "If you're going to kill someone there isn't much reason to get all worked up about it and angry. Any discussions beforehand are a waste of time. We need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger."[1] The lawsuit was later settled.[1][2] Compare this to: "One thing I find myself about is whether we shouldn't try and make the "ACPI" extensions somehow Windows specific. If seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the result is that Linux works great without having to do the work. Maybe there is no way Io avoid this problem but it does bother me. Maybe we couid define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open. Or maybe we could patent something relaled to this." In both cases it was Bill Himself that suggested to employees that they threw a wrench into something to prevent competing o/s'es from interoperating properly. Many of you probably know about the AARD scandal for I wanted to post this for those who don't :)
That's right -- and AMI makes their money by intentionally NOT taking fixes from their customers and integrating them into their core (so that when problems crop up, they can offer their "services" to help fix them) -- it's like pulling teeth getting them to take a fix upstream, believe me. AMI sucks just as much as any other BIOS vendor.
In the original Ubuntu Forums thread, some people said the story needed to be Dugg (which it was). Later, a voice of reason said that the story should be submitted to Slashdot so that they could find out what was really going on in the BIOS.
I'm proud that Slashdot has the rep of having really smart posters who know their shit.
BTW, I was always in the "bad copy-paste" camp.
Put identity in the browser.
I say the same thing every time I leave McDonald's.
Looking over the post again, I finally notice that in his letter to the FTC does include a ridiculously speculative claim involving financial incentives to cripple Linux. You're right about the chip on his shoulder.
Having said that, the "news" was (a) at least some Foxconn motherboards having crippled BIOSs that don't work correctly under Linux, (b) Foxconn refusing to resolve the issue, mostly under a claim that ACPI was supported using as proof that Microsoft says it was okay*, and (c) pointless user speculation on what Foxconn's motives are. Including mention of (c) and talking about "come to your own conclusions" is tabloidic/yellow jouralism crap. (a) and (b) were important. I generally try to ignore (c) because (c) seems to be common in most "news" (newspaper, tv, and internet). That's one reason I was pretty blind to it (okay, and I tend to skim through forum posts and articles since lots of them are filled with useless filler). Never the less (a) and (b) were the "real news" to me, and I get the feeling that that's a major reason that it was posted. But thinking about it more, now that I see what you mean, the conspiracy angle might have been another major reason.
*It's funny, in a way, that they'd claim ACPI support, not test on Linux, and then reaffirming their ACPI support by confirming it works on Windows. But, *shrug*. To me that implies incompetence, actually.
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Lol... Not allowing unsigned code to run on a device is not closing GPL code down. It is closing the device down and you still get the code. My issues there is the reach and scope of what was being done. If the government of any country does something along the same lines, you would be the first in line crying fowl over the encroachments.
And no, they didn't deliberately break anything if Linux is detected.
Another thing, what I'm defending against is improper accusations being made because of ignorance. Of someone made an untrue claim about you, I would defend you just as vigorously. I think it is more telling of you using the term "corporate masters" then anything I have said. So don't expect me to defend you over true accusations. You reap what you sow and I think there is enough unsubstantiated FUD floating about.