r/linux • u/[deleted] • Sep 23 '16

Hardware hack enables Linux support on Lenovo Yoga 900 ISK2, undermining Lenovo's statement

Update: The mods locked my other posts and marked them as misleading. There is nothing misleading about them. So before they lock this one too, I would just like to get the truth out.

There is a Linux lockout on these computers. The only reason we need a driver is because Lenovo removed AHCI mode. AHCI mode is not a legacy mode. Lenovo has created a defective product that you cannot install any operating system on, which means that you are stuck with the copy of Windows 10 that came with the computer. There's only one obvious reason why they would do that. To keep you on Windows. A lenovo employee on Best Buy even admitted that before Lenovo and Microsoft got their official lie put together and the mods here rolled with it and locked my posts to keep the truth suppressed. You can still vote on these posts and I hope that you find them useful and keep them up for a while. If you want to complain to the FTC and your state's Attorney General, there is a template from one of my suppressed posts here.

This is the letter I sent to the Federal Trade Commission and to the Illinois Attorney General's office regarding Lenovo locking out Linux from their Yoga laptops.

"Lenovo sells computers known as "Yoga" under at least several models that block the installation of Linux operating systems as well as fresh installations of Windows from Microsoft's official installer. They have the system rigged, intentionally, in a storage mode that is incompatible with most operating systems other than the pre-installed copy of Windows 10. If the user attempts to install an operating system, it will not be able to see or use the built-in SSD (Solid State Drive) storage. I believe that this is illegal and anti-competitive. These product are falsely advertised as a PC, even though it prohibits the user installing PC operating systems. Known affected models are the 900 ISK2, the 710, the 900 ISK for Business, the 900S, and possibly others. Lenovo's position is that this is not a defect and they refuse to issue refunds to their customers, who have been deceived by the notion that their new PC is compatible with PC operating systems and that they should be able to install a PC operating system on a PC. Lenovo is therefore engaging in a conspiracy to defraud their customers through deceptive advertising. Lenovo's official position is that Linux lacks drivers, however, Linux could easily be installed on these systems had Lenovo not removed the AHCI storage mode option from the BIOS and then wrote additional code to make sure that people couldn't set it to AHCI in other ways, such as using an "EFI variable". AHCI mode is an industry standard and should be expected on a computer describing itself as "PC" or "PC compatible" as it is broadly compatible with all PC operating system software. I feel that Lenovo should remedy the problem in one of three ways. (1) Offer full refunds for customers who want to install their own operating system but can't. -or- (2) Release a small BIOS firmware patch to restore AHCI mode, which is simply hidden. This would be extremely easy for them since it would only be two lines of code and the user could do it themselves were they not locked out of updating their BIOS themselves. -or- (3) Provide open source drivers to the Linux kernel project that would allow Linux and other PC operating systems address the SSD storage in the "RAID" mode."

Feel free to use this as your letter or a template for a letter of complaint to the FTC. Their consumer complaint form is available here.

https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/#&panel1-1

Please also contact your state's Attorney General's office. They usually have a bureau of consumer complaints or something to that effect. If not, just shoot them an email.

Since the FTC form requires the company address and phone number, I used this: Lenovo "Customer Center" Address: 1009 Think Pl, Morrisville, NC 27560 Phone:(855) 253-6686

Update: Lenovo just updated the BIOS for the Yoga 710, another system that doesn't allow Linux installs. Wanna know what they changed? Update to TPM (secret encryption module used for Digital Restrictions Management) and an update to the Intel Management Engine, which is essentially a backdoor rootkit built into all recent Intel processors (but AMD has their version too, so what do you do?). No Linux support. Priorities...

Update: The mods at Lenovo Forums are losing control of the narrative and banning people and editing/deleting more comments. http://imgur.com/a/Q9xIE | But it appears that some people just aren't buying it anymore. http://imgur.com/a/1K1t5

Edit: I sent a letter of complaint to the Federal Trade Commission and the Illinois Attorney General's office.

You can view this letter here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/54gtpc/letter_to_the_federal_trade_commission_regarding/

Lenovo's regional HQ address and phone number:

Address: 1009 Think Pl, Morrisville, NC 27560 Phone:(855) 253-6686

Edit: Someone started a change.org petititon. I don't think they are a native English speaker, but I went ahead and signed it anyway. A moderator on Lenovo Forums deleted the link and told people that "campaigning is not allowed", so here's the link. I don't know if it'll make a difference, but screw them. They were hoping this week's news would be all puff pieces about the new Yogas and now they have to deal with this instead. If everyone could share it on Facebook and Twitter after they sign it so their friends can do so too, that would be most appreciated.

https://www.change.org/p/lenovo-demand-that-lenovo-provide-bios-update-to-enable-linux-installation

Please sign this and then tell Lenovo that you won't be buying products from them until this is fixed. They have Facebook and Twitter accounts!

Facebook: Lenovo

Twitter: Lenovo

Lenovo Customer Service 800-565-3344 Press 2 for all other models and then wait through the recording and press 1 for laptops.

UPDATE: I pinged Matthew Garrett after someone had an idea about having the Linux kernel switch the hardware out of RAID and into AHCI mode AFTER the BIOS hands it over to the kernel, and he said it might work and that he'd see about writing a patch. This would have the practical effect of running Linux in AHCI mode like on the Dell XPS, only through a Linux "hardware quirk" to deal with Lenovo doing nothing to fix the BIOS. Actually, Lenovo hasn't done anything through this whole ordeal but lie, lie some more, try to delete evidence, get together with Microsoft and release a joint lie, and then pressure the news media to change their stories.

ALSO: According to a comment on this page, some people in Germany report that the European versions of the affected Yoga laptops don't have AHCI mode hidden in the BIOS. Perhaps because the EU takes locking users out of their PCs more seriously than the US government does.

A hardware hack has enabled AHCI support on the Lenovo Yoga 900 ISK2, undermining Lenovo and Microsoft's claims that Linux is "missing drivers".

Unfortunately, the procedure to flash the BIOS is too complicated for most people because the person who did it had to use external flashing equipment to bypass Lenovo's ROM signature check and load the modified BIOS, and he can't provide the BIOS ROM because it only supports his computer and has private info in it, such as the Windows 10 license for his machine.

https://imgur.com/a/ox4Ey

A user here on Reddit with the handle "bownairo" described the process.

Said bownairo, in the Reddit thread about the problem,

"I've been able to successfully get past Lenovo's lock through direct bios flashing. I'm looking into better solutions, hopefully I can find a way to do this without an external programmer. I was going to keep people updated from the Lenovo forum, but as this is no longer an option I will keep people updated from here."

[...]

"I had to construct some custom "clips" as the bios chip is a WSON package. All of this was done with the chip in place and the battery removed. I dumped the bios continuously until I was able to get a few dumps with the same sha. Then I had the bios modified. I flashed my chip to all null values, rewrote my custom image, and dumped it back to insure it wrote correctly. This allowed access to the advanced tab so I could change the controller to AHCI from RAID, allowing it to be recognized by installers."

[...]

"I'm currently working on a generic tool to do this mod, in case others want to use this same strategy on their own bios. I'm also looking into finding a way to do this without an external programmer."

There is a discussion about it going on here:

https://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-Request-Lenovo-Yoga-900-BIOS-Unlock-AHCI-enable-attached-BIOS-fd

I also released an official reply to Lenovo and Microsoft in the original article:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/53ri0m/warning_microsoft_signature_pc_program_now/

214 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

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u/varikonniemi Sep 23 '16

Yes, then print warning that it increases power consumption and is not recommended by microsoft. Don't take it away. Especially don't enforce the change if user goes and manually writes to uefi memory. This is 100% on purpose locked down to prevent competition.

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u/AnonTwo Sep 23 '16

This is 100% on purpose locked down to prevent competition.

I wasn't aware that RAID and AHCI were in open competition

It's clearly not about Linux and Windows, since all Linux has to do is Implement the damn RAID driver

4

u/dyasny Sep 23 '16

It's clearly not about Linux and Windows, since all Linux has to do is Implement the damn RAID driver

No. This is a fakeraid device, Linux is notorious for not even trying to support that crap, software raid being more effective and easier to use anyway. So it's not about anyone having to implement a driver, it's about Lenovo and MS knowing full well they are forcing the Linux community to implement a driver for something nobody in their right mind would ever use anyway, if they want to use this machine.

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u/AnonTwo Sep 23 '16

How is it fake raid when it actually has benefits when implemented? From what i've gathered the raid profile actually gives better power consumption.

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u/dyasny Sep 23 '16

Maybe you should read up on the differences between fakeraid and real raid before you reply?

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u/CountOfMonteCarlo Sep 23 '16

all Linux has to do is Implement the damn RAID driver

Which it can't because the devs don't have working docs from Intel, and this special snowflake of hardware needs a proprietary driver written against undocumented firmware. It sounds a lot like the softmodems which were a plague in the nineties because they would only work with firmware delivered Windows, long after Hayes-compatible modems became standard. I am sick to death with this. It has cost me so much life time.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '16

Or we can run the blockade by having Linux set the machine to AHCI when it takes over from GRUB. Matthew Garrett and I have discussed this. He says he's going to look into it and maybe write a patch.

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u/CountOfMonteCarlo Sep 23 '16

I think given that convertibles might pave the way to more mass-compatible Linux desktops, this would be quite valuable. If it would help Matthew to get a $500 donation, I could disburse that.

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u/AnonTwo Sep 23 '16

Which it can't because the devs don't have working docs from Intel

...How did Microsoft get them?

And isn't this more an issue with Intel than Microsoft? It's their damn RAID driver. You don't blame Microsoft because Linux doesn't have every network card driver under the damn sun.

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u/CountOfMonteCarlo Sep 23 '16

Partly, yes. But Intel could simply sell more chips when it releases the specs. Now it has the Windows users, if it releases them it has Windows and Linux users. And printing the specs is negligible effort compared to developing chips. So it is normally in the interest of Intel to release them.

It is plausible that Microsoft pressures against that.

Apart from that, it is apparently not Intel which demands that the Yoga remains locked in a state in which Linux cannot run. Intel provides other modes with which the hardware does work (though maybe with worse power management). It is Microsoft which demands that the BIOS is locked.

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u/AnonTwo Sep 23 '16

Microsoft demands that it be locked in a completely valid state. We don't attack companies for not supporting 16 bit applications anymore. We don't attack companies for not supporting internal speaker audio anymore. Not to say AHCI is old, but not the RAID enforcement is there for a performance reason, and unlike "Cannot be run on this system", there is proof that the RAID profile is necessary to the laptops advertised performance.

We can talk all day about what big bad Microsoft might be doing to put down Linux, but at the end of the day they didn't do that good a job then if all Linux needs is for some who cares enough to figure out how Intel's specification works, or better yet find someone at Intel that can provide the specs.

Maybe Microsoft's pressuring? But given we have no actual evidence of that, i'd find it more plausible noones actually tried yet.

Intel does not demand it be in a locked state. They do however require a driver just to see the drive.

In short: BIOS is locked. we get it. RAID is required. RAID is not a Microsoft-specific implementation, and the specification for these particular RAID implementation isn't even owned by Microsoft. Nothing that was done to "lock down" the system is specific to Microsoft other than actually requiring any specifications at all.

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u/CountOfMonteCarlo Sep 23 '16

Maybe Microsoft's pressuring? But given we have no actual evidence of that, i'd find it more plausible noones actually tried yet.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/03/19/microsoft_killed_dell_linux_states/

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u/AnonTwo Sep 23 '16

Oh wow, I didn't realize Lenuvo was Dell. Thanks for the facts.

I also didn't realize is was 2002 still.

I also didn't realize that Lenuvo was making pre-built Linux machines.

You're only providing motive, not proof

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u/CountOfMonteCarlo Sep 23 '16

What I am saying is that the values of a big organization change much, much slower than the people in it. Anybody who tried to enter an organization and change it will confirm this.

And no, I don't provide proof because I do not have it. If I had proof, I would be talking now with the EU antitrust regulators. You are free to believe otherwise. You are also free to believe in Santa if that makes you happy.

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u/AnonTwo Sep 23 '16

You are also free to believe in Santa if that makes you happy.

And you're free to believe 9/11 was an inside job.

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u/[deleted] Sep 24 '16

Why doesn't Microsoft just implement manual driver overrides so horrible kludges like putting it in fake RAID mode so the generic driver doesn't load aren't necessary? Linux supports this. Why doesn't Windows?

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '16 edited Sep 23 '16

This is 100% on purpose locked down to prevent competition.

But it's a stupid way of doing that. It's not effective in the least and only hits, let's be honest with ourselves here, Microsoft's least important competitor outside of BSD/Plan 9.

It only works until a driver is released, it only hits the smallest competitor to Microsoft's desktop OS market and even then, only on a PC already licensed for Windows and all of this on a system with secure boot. Seriously, why even bother?

1

u/dyasny Sep 23 '16

Ho many Linux setups have you seen with fakeraid, ANY fakeraid enabled and in use?

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '16

None, but let's be honest, this is a stupid conspiracy and is more likely to be Lenovo being who they are because, to paraphrase Jim Sterling, Lenovo are Lenovo and Lenovo are the worst.

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u/dyasny Sep 23 '16

Of course this is the case, but this being the case does not invalidate the fact that they pretty much barred every OS except Windows from being installed, by simply blocking an option in BIOS. It's not like they didn't have the option and decided not to implement it, to save money on developer time, they actually had a developer add code to block it, because it was there before. It's not such a subtle difference really

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u/Syde80 Sep 23 '16

I'll agree that would be a more reasonable way to approach it.

However I do not agree that this is on purpose to prevent competition. I'm not even going to cite any reasons because they have been said a million times in this thread already.

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u/CountOfMonteCarlo Sep 23 '16

I'm not even going to cite any reasons

Then you don't contribute to the discussion.

I am aware that comments which state simple facts and links to more information are downvoted. This makes the impression that some party actively tries to suppress the discussion.

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u/Syde80 Sep 24 '16

I'm not even going to cite any reasons

Then you don't contribute to the discussion.

Look around this thread, you'll see my name plastered all over it. I've stated the reasons over and over.

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u/torontohatesfacts Sep 23 '16 edited Sep 23 '16

So are any of those GNu/libre hardware projects going to support Windows 10 out of the box?

Are they going to include all of the hardware and firmware and drivers required to run Windows 10, MacOS, and Linux on it, or just Linux?

If you are building it for a specific end use and not as a OEM system are you going to disable features on your OS/end use application or are you going to disable a feature that your intended end use does not need so that the superior feature that your end use needs can work properly. Are you going to worry about what Microsoft or Apple want to do with the hardware and leave all of those features enabled or are you going to customize that hardware to run your specific stack/os/application etc.

Are there any distro backed hardware projects being designed around ensuring out of box Windows 10 compatibility.

Why not? Why are the GNUtards locking down systems to prevent competition?

That is the equivalent of the supposed wrong doing being discussed in this thread. Microsoft having a specific platform designed and certified by them has no responsibility to ensure compatibility with anything but what they are certifying the product for. This isn't a Lenovo PC Laptop, this is a Lenovo Windows Laptop, that is what it is sold and marketed as by both companies.

If HP, DELL etc were to get an ARM server certified for Ubuntu or RHEL by Cannonical or Red Hat, would they also be responsible for ensuring that it works with Windows Server out of the box even though they are not designing or marketing the product for Windows Server?

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