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Recovery

Intro

This project is in early development phase. On certain hardware configurations, the Dasharo firmware may not boot correctly (i.e. we will have "bricked" the platform). In such a case, the recovery procedure can reinstall the original firmware from the board manufacturer.

There are two documented recovery methods: using a CH341A programming kit or an RTE.

External flashing with programmer

RTE

In this case, using external programmer is necessary. We are using RTE here.

  • Connect programmer to the flash chip as shown in the Hardware connection / SPI section of the Development documentation.

  • Download official BIOS from vendor's website (this is the newest version, you may choose an older one too or in the best case use your firmware backup):

wget https://download.msi.com/bos_exe/mb/7D25v13.zip
unzip 7D25v13.zip
  • Flash via external programmer:

The command line will be different, depending on the programmer you use

flashrom -p linux_spi:dev=/dev/spidev1.0,spispeed=16000 -w 7D25v13/E7D25IMS.130
  • First boot after the recovery process is significantly longer

CH341A

Prerequisites

The full set is now available at our online shop.

  1. CH341A kit with 1.8V level-shifter. Can be bought on e.g. Amazon

  2. WSON8 probe. Can be bought from China on Aliexpress or eBay.

  3. USB2.0 Female-Male extension cord 0.5m or longer (optional)

  4. Machine with Linux and flashrom.

Connection

First start with assembling the CH341A and the 1.8V adapter. Pay attention to which holes you attach the adapter. You should use the holes marked as 25XX (closer to the USB plug):

Place the 1.8V adapter in the holes and lock it with the lever. Be sure that the arrow on the adapter is facing the black lever (opposite side of USB plug):

Now take the breakout board with pin headers:

and plug it into the other 1.8V adapter, be sure that numbers 1-4 on the breakout match the numbers 1 and 4 on the adapter:

Numbers should be visible on the upper side after assembling:

Next, take the WSON8 probe and locate the white dot on the needles side (it will indicate the first reference pin, although you may use any other corner pin):

Check which wire is connecting to this pin (the connection should be 1 to 1). In my case it is white wire and it will be used as reference to connect the wires to the breakout board:

The wires should follow the same order of colors as on the probe (keep them straight, and do not cross). Repeat with the other 4 wires on the other side of the probe:

Now the connection is ready. Time to locate the flash chip of the board.

Flashing

Connect the CH341A USB plug to the host machine which will be doing the flashing process (optionally use the USB extension cord for convenience). Locate the flash chip on the MSI PRO Z690-A DDR4 board:

Locate the first pin on the flash chip (marked with a circle on the flash chip package and indicated by number 1 printed on the board - red circle):

Attach the WSON8 probe matching the first pin of the probe (white wire) and first pin of the flash chip:

Now on the Linux machine check if the flash is detected using a sample command

sudo flashrom -p ch341a_spi -r firmware.bin

You should see something like this:

flashrom v1.2-567-gf4eb405 on Linux 5.19.9-200.fc36.x86_64 (x86_64)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at https://flashrom.org

Using clock_gettime for delay loops (clk_id: 1, resolution: 1ns).
Found Winbond flash chip "W25Q256.W" (32768 kB, SPI) on ch341a_spi.
Reading flash... done.

You don't need to wait for the command completion and interrupt it with Ctrl+C shortcut, it just serves as a confirmation of good connection. If you decide to interrupt it, reset the CH341A programmer by unpluging and repluging it to USB port. Now stabilize your hand holding the WSON8 probe on the flash chip and invoke the real flashing command (e.g. if your original/working firmware backup is saved as firmware_backup.bin):

sudo flashrom -p ch341a_spi -w firmware_backup.bin

Note that USB programmers are pretty slow, the whole operation make take several minutes (can be 10-15 minutes in worst case). At the end of operation you should see:

flashrom v1.2-567-gf4eb405 on Linux 5.19.9-200.fc36.x86_64 (x86_64)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at https://flashrom.org

Using clock_gettime for delay loops (clk_id: 1, resolution: 1ns).
Found Winbond flash chip "W25Q256.W" (32768 kB, SPI) on ch341a_spi.
Reading old flash chip contents... done.
Erasing and writing flash chip... Erase/write done.
Verifying flash... VERIFIED.

MSI Flash BIOS Button

The MSI Flash BIOS Button would give us easy-to-use recovery method. We have tried that one to switch from Dasharo firmware to the original one, but it did not work, unfortunately. The details of how this process exactly works are unknown due to the closed nature of it's implementation. We can research this topic more in the future, so maybe it can be utilized later for deployment and/or recovery of the platform.

SMBIOS unique data recovery

Serial number format and recovery

SMBIOS specification sections 7.2 and 7.3 defines two spaces for serial number: the system serial number and baseboard serial number. The original MSI PRO Z690-A firmware provides only the baseboard serial number.

In case you have lost your serial number in the process of flashing Dasharo or newer MSI firmware, there is a way to retrieve it. The board has a QR code printed on the mainboard between the chipset heatsink and dPGU PCIe slot:

If you read the QR code with your smartphone you will get the full serial number. The serial number has the format 07D25xx_LyzEaaaaaa where:

  • 07D25 - is the board model, i.e. MS-7D25 for this particular board
  • xx is the mainboard revision which should match the revision imprinted between the M2_1 slot and dGPU slot. E.g. xx=11 means VER:1.1
  • yz is the manufacturing date in hex, i.e. y is the month, z is the year, for example A1 means October 2021, 12 means January 2022
  • aaaaaa is the unique 6-digit number which is imprinted under the serial number QR code

System UUID format and recovery

SMBIOS specification section 7.2 defines a field for unique system identification with a special number called UUID (Universally Unique IDentifier). UUID is specified by RFC 4122. MSI firmware provides the system UUID in the SMBIOS system information structure.

The problem with UUID is that it cannot be recovered if the backup binary or SMBIOS logs are lost. You can backup the SMBIOS information with our Dasharo Tools Suite bootable stick. The dmidecode.log will have all the necessary information. Things we know about MSI system UUID:

  • UUID format is as follows: 33221100-5544-7766-8899-AABBCCDDEEFF, the hex numbers represent the order of bytes in memory for the little-endian format as required by SMBIOS
  • MSI UUIDs do not conform to any of the RFC 4122 UUID variants/versions (the bits responsible for UUID version and variant identification are not constant across multiple boards)
  • the last octet group AABBCCDDEEFF is equal to the MAC address of the on-board Intel i225 Ethernet, so be sure to NOT share the UUID with anybody as it contains system sensitive information
  • the first four groups are either random numbers or some cryptographically acquired value from e.g. combination of some board data, unfortunately it is not known by us

The MAC address is printed on a sticker placed on the 2x2 SATA connector:

SMBIOS data migration

For Dasharo simply follow the Initial Deployment how to migrate the data.

For MSI firmware you will probably need an AMI DMI/SMBIOS editor to save those values back if you do not have a backup binary.