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Ubuntu 17.10 Temporarily Pulled Due To A BIOS Corrupting Problem (phoronix.com)

Posted by msmash on from the call-IT dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Canonical has temporarily pulled the download links for Ubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" from the Ubuntu website due to ongoing reports of some laptops finding their BIOS corrupted after installing this latest Ubuntu release. The issue is appearing most frequently with Lenovo laptops but there are also reports of issues with other laptop vendors as well. This issue appears to stem from the Intel SPI driver in the 17.10's Linux 4.13 kernel corrupting the BIOS for a select number of laptop motherboards. Canonical is aware of this issue and is planning to disable the Intel SPI drivers in their kernel builds. Canonical's hardware enablement team has already verified this works around the problem, but doesn't provide any benefit if your BIOS is already corrupted.

3 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. That ain't right! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How the hell have we let what's supposed to be ROM get so fucked up by a simple software upgrade? That, Ain't, Right!

    1. Re:That ain't right! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You don't need to overwrite the EEPROM to cause problems. In this case, since it's caused by the SPI driver, it looks like corrupt data is being written to the volatile memory used by the BIOS to save settings. This is battery backed memory that can be reset, but it's a bit trickier in laptops.

  2. Isn't wonderful by DarkOx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That we have moved from simple reliable BIOS systems that provided a little boot code to get the system going on a ROM, to an advanced re-programable system so that software BUGs can now brick your PC!

    Progress!

    --
    Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html