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Features

This section describes the functionality of the Dasharo Tools Suite. These are:

Available Commands

When DTS is started, it has following options for the user to choose from:

Dasharo zero-touch initial deployment

DTS can be used to flash Dasharo firmware on your hardware. To achieve this, boot DTS, choose option number 2. After creating report with firmware dump as backup, type d or c to confirm the installation of Dasharo firmware. Option c stands for community release which is available for anyone using Dasharo Tools Suite, option d stands for DPP release and it is only available to Dasharo Entry Subscription subscribers. If you have DPP subscription then do steps in How can I use my Dasharo Pro Package credentials section first.

Next you will be asked two questions to confirm flashing. The first will be displayed with the detected information about the device you are using DTS on. The second will also provide the hash of Dasharo components which will then be used for flashing. You can compare them with the values listed in the supported hardware section on docs.dasharo.com. Both these questions can be accepted by typing Y.

Procedure execution ends automatically on the reboot of the platform (unless it requires otherwise). After restarting the device, you can enjoy the basic version of Dasharo, which we provide for given hardware.

This feature is supported on the following platforms:

  • ASUS KGPE-D16,
  • Dell OptiPlex 7010/9010,
  • MSI PRO Z690-A DDR4,
  • MSI PRO Z690-A DDR5,
  • MSI PRO Z790-P DDR4,
  • MSI PRO Z790-P DDR5,
  • NovaCustom NV4x,
  • NovaCustom NS5x/7x,
  • ODROID-H4+.

And partially (only EC firmware flashing) on:

  • NovaCustom V540TU/TNx,
  • NovaCustom V560TU/TNx.

HCL Report

DTS allows the generation of a package with logs containing hardware information. To create one, choose option number 1 and check out the disclaimer. If you would like to send the report to our servers, please remember about connecting the ethernet cable. More information can be found in glossary.

HCL Report correctness

Please note DTS HCL Report assumes that your chipset is already supported by flashrom. There are also other false negative errors and unknowns, which we trying to fix to improve user experience.

Always check results file to confirm the quality of your HCL report. Sample content of such file may look as follows:

[OK]    PCI configuration space and topology
[UNKNOWN] USB devices and topology
[OK]    Super I/O configuration
[UNKNOWN] EC configuration
[ERROR]   MSRs
[OK]    SMBIOS tables
[OK]    BIOS information
[OK]    CMOS NVRAM
[UNKNOWN] Intel configuration registers
[OK]    GPIO configuration C header files
[OK]    kernel dmesg
[OK]    ACPI tables
[UNKNOWN] Audio devices configuration
[OK]    CPU info
[OK]    I/O ports
[OK]    Input bus types
[OK]    Firmware image
[OK]    I2C bus
[UNKNOWN] ACPI tables
[OK]    Touchpad information
[OK]    DIMMs information
[ERROR]   CBMEM table information
[ERROR]   TPM information
[ERROR]   AMT information
[OK]    ME information
Results of getting data:

Legend:
[OK]     Data get successfully
[UNKNOWN]  Result is unknown
[ERROR]    Error during getting data

Please report all errors experienced while performing a dump to dasharo-issues repository.

BIOS backup

One of the key components of HCL Report is your BIOS backup. To prepare BIOS backup of your platform, simply run HCL Report and decide if you would like to contribute information about your hardware configuration.

Please consider the following options depending on your situation:

  • YES - If you decide to contribute, you can always get back to us and ask about BIOS backup, which we will provide after simple verification that you are the owner of the hardware.
  • NO (default) - If you decide to not contribute, your situation depends on the boot method you used to execute DTS:
    • Network Boot - please note that Dasharo booted over iPXE assumes no storage available, so the report, and your BIOS backup are stored in temporary memory and will not be available after reboot. Please make sure to move HCL Report to not volatile storage. This can be done using option S to enter shell,
    • USB Boot - HCL Report and BIOS backup are saved to USB storage root directory.

Firmware update

DTS can be used to update Dasharo firmware. To achieve this, boot it on platform with flashed Dasharo and choose option number 2. You may see additional information about available updates if you are not Dasharo Pro Package subscriber. If you have DPP subscription then do steps in How can I use my Dasharo Pro Package credentials section first.

Next you will be asked two questions to confirm flashing. The first will be displayed with the detected information about the device you are using DTS on. The second will also provide the hash of Dasharo components which will then be used for flashing. You can compare them with the values listed in the supported hardware section on docs.dasharo.com. Both these questions can be accepted by typing Y.

If you see the following warning during the process, you do not need to worry about it:

Warning: Setting BIOS Control at 0xdc from 0x8b to 0x89 failed.
New value is 0x8b.

Procedure execution ends automatically on the reboot of the platform (unless it requires otherwise). After restarting the device, you can enjoy the updated version of Dasharo, which we provide for given hardware.

Below we provide an example of updating Dasharo firmware from version v1.1.0 to v1.1.1 on MSI PRO Z690-A DDR4.

 Dasharo Tools Suite Script 2.0.0-rc1
 (c) Dasharo <contact@dasharo.com>
 Report issues at: https://github.com/Dasharo/dasharo-issues
*********************************************************
**                HARDWARE INFORMATION
*********************************************************
**    System Inf.: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. MS-7D25
** Baseboard Inf.: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. PRO Z690-A WIFI DDR4(MS-7D25)
**       CPU Inf.: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-12600K
**    RAM Channel-0-DIMM-0: KF3600C17D4/8GX
**    RAM Channel-0-DIMM-1: KF3600C17D4/8GX
**    RAM Channel-0-DIMM-0: KF3600C17D4/8GX
**    RAM Channel-0-DIMM-1: KF3600C17D4/8GX
*********************************************************
**                FIRMWARE INFORMATION
*********************************************************
**      BIOS Inf.: 3mdeb Dasharo (coreboot+UEFI) v1.1.0
*********************************************************
**     1) Dasharo HCL report
**     2) Update Dasharo Firmware
**     3) Restore firmware from Dasharo HCL report
**     4) Load your DPP keys
*********************************************************
Select a menu option or
R to reboot  P to poweroff  S to enter shell
K to launch SSH server
2

Waiting for network connection ...
Network connection established.
Checking if board is Dasharo compatible.
Gathering flash chip and chipset information...
Flash information: vendor="Programmer" name="Opaque flash chip"
Flash size: 32M
Getting platform specific GPG key... Done
Waiting for system clock to be synced ...
Checking for the latest Dasharo update available...

Current Dasharo version: 1.1.0
Latest available Dasharo version: 1.1.1

Are you sure you want to proceed with update? (Y|n) y

Downloading Dasharo firmware...Done

Please verify detected hardware!

Board vendor: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.
System model: MS-7D25
Board model: PRO Z690-A WIFI DDR4(MS-7D25)

Does it match your actual specification? (Y|n) y

Following firmware will be used to install Dasharo
Dasharo BIOS firmware:
  - link: https://3mdeb.com/(...)/msi_ms7d25_v1.1.1_ddr4.rom
  - hash: 3b438422338cf4c13abdb25823a9b2a2ad6e82fabbe0d9ed41a16a6eae1f15ff

You can learn more about this release on: https://docs.dasharo.com/

Do you want to update Dasharo firmware on your hardware? (Y|n) y

Checking Dasharo firmware checksum... Verified.
Checking Dasharo firmware signature... Verified.

Backing up firmware configuration... Done.
Found file config at 0xc24c0, type raw, compressed 5418, size 19725
Checking flash layout.
Checking vboot keys.
Updating Dasharo firmware...
This may take several minutes. Please be patient and do not power off your
computer or touch the keyboard!
Successfully updated Dasharo firmware
Syncing disks... Done.
The computer will reboot automatically in 5 seconds
Rebooting in 5s:
5...
4...
3...
2...
1...
Rebooting

Local firmware update

To flash a local BIOS image (e.g. mounted from a USB stick), you can drop to the shell (option S) and use the flashrom binary provided inside DTS directly.

DANGER: Failure to use flashrom correctly may result in an unbootable device. For example, never flash an image that does not contain an Intel Firmware Descriptor (IFD) region and/or Management Engine (ME) region to the whole chip.

You can use flashrom -p internal without additional parameters to double check if flashrom detects your chipset. This will not write anything.

The following flashrom command will only rewrite the BIOS region:

sudo flashrom -p internal --ifd -i bios -w [path/to/your/coreboot.rom]

If flashrom outputs the following, you do not need to worry about it:

Enabling flash write... Warning: Setting BIOS Control at 0xdc from 0x8b to 0x89 failed.
New value is 0x8b.
SPI Configuration is locked down

Update issues

If you see the following pop-ups during the first boot after the update:

error-0x03 error-0x13

You probably performed an update using a deprecated version of Dasharo Tools Suite and have not disabled BIOS lock. Do not worry, nothing bad has happened. If you backed up your old firmware, do the following steps:

  1. Reboot your device and turn off BIOS lock (you can find this option in Dasharo Security Options as BIOS boot medium lock).
  2. Boot the DTS you backed up your old firmware with and choose option 3, which will restore it.
  3. After restoring the firmware, perform another update, but make sure you are using the latest Dasharo Tools Suite version (new DTS has tools to protect you from such issues).

If you used flashrom as described in Local firmware update, flash the firmware again, but make sure the BIOS lock is turned off this time.

EC transition

DTS allows performing full Embedded Controller firmware transition from the proprietary vendor EC firmware to the Dasharo EC firmware. Currently, this functionality is supported on this hardware

Starting from DTS v1.2.0 to perform EC transition please run firmware update on the platform with proprietary vendor EC firmware.

EC update

Note

This section only applies to NovaCustom releases earlier than v2.0.0 and is replaced by the new automatic EC firmware sync feature.

DTS allows to update open-source Embedded Controller firmware to the newer version. This is how we can achieve that.

  • Retrieve information about your current EC.

    dasharo_ectool info

    The output of the above-described command should contain information about the version of flashed firmware:

    board: clevo/ns50mu
version: 2022-08-16_c12ff1a

  • Download the newest version of Embedded Controller firmware.

  • Plug in power supply, without it, flashing EC is not possible as losing power may cause in damaged firmware.

  • Flash Embedded Controller firmware internally.

    dasharo_ectool flash ec_file.rom

    The output of the above-described command should look as follows:

    file board: Ok("clevo/ns50mu")
file version: Ok("2022-08-16_c12ff1a")
ec board: Ok("clevo/ns50mu")
ec version: Ok("2022-08-31_cbff21b")
Waiting 5 seconds for all keys to be released
Sync
SPI Read 128K
Saving ROM to backup.rom
SPI Write 128K
SPI Read 128K
Successfully programmed SPI ROM
Result: Ok(())
Sync
System will shut off in 5 seconds
Sync

Note: this is example output, versions may differ

  • Computer will shut down automatically.
  • Power on your computer. Booting process may take a while.
  • After boot, choose option S to drop to Shell.

  • Retrieve information about your updated EC.

    dasharo_ectool info

    The output of the above-described command should contain information about the version of flashed firmware:

    board: clevo/ns50mu
version: 2022-08-31_cbff21b

Additional features

The section below presents a list of functionalities added to DTS, which were developed at the community's request and which do not necessarily relate strictly to Dasharo.

Run commands from iPXE shell automatically

It is possible to automatically execute your chosen commands after iPXE boot. You can use the local-ipxe-server.sh script for that. What it does is:

  • automatically download the latest version of DTS artifacts needed for iPXE boot,
  • creates a dts.ipxe bootchain file, which will boot DTS and also run your custom script,
  • creates a simple, python-based HTTP server, from which you will be able to boot DTS.

Note: This functionality is available from version 1.2.19.

To use this functionality, please follow the steps presented below.

Firstly, please clone meta-dts repository.

git clone https://github.com/Dasharo/meta-dts.git && cd meta-dts

Then, start the script with the following command.

./scripts/local-ipxe-server.sh

Once you run the script, you will be prompted for the port of the server, like this.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This script by default sets the server up on port 9000. If you want to use a
different port, for example 9001, then run the script like this:
    ./meta-dts/scripts/ipxe-dts.sh 9001
Do you want to continue? [y/n]

If you proceed, at the end the script will tell you how you can boot DTS through iPXE.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
you can now boot dts v1.2.18 through iPXE on another machine by running:
    dhcp
    chain http://192.168.4.158:9000/dts.ipxe
on that machine in the iPXE shell. It will also execute a simple "commands.sh"
script after booting. If you want to change its contents, just change the
"scripts/commands.sh" file, and rerun this script.

This script by default sets the server up on port 9000. If you want to use a
different port, for example 9001, then run the script like this:
    ./meta-dts/scripts/ipxe-dts.sh 9001
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 9000 (http://0.0.0.0:9000/) ...

Run DTS using VentoyOS

VentoyOS allows operating systems to be booted from ISO files. Unfortunately, the ISO-formatted DTS image we've provided so far mounted the main file system in read-only mode, which, combined with the fact that most of DTS' functionality is strictly tied to the ability to write files there, made the system unusable. Consequently, we have stopped including ISO images in DTS releases since v1.2.20, pending the resolution of this issue. We will reintroduce them once we determine the appropriate action to address this dependency. Progress on this matter is being monitored through issue 288.