Last week I replaced the internals of my desktop computer with a new ASUS P8H77-M PRO, Intel G2120 and 16 GB RAM. With one round of Memtest passed, I booted into my old Precise install and got bit hard by what appears to be Bug #993187: frequent hard lockups (multiple within a few hours of use). I installed linux-image-generic-lts-quantal (currently 3.5.0.22.29) and that seemed to resolve the lockups: I got more than two days of uptime (ending with an intended shutdown), half of which I was actively using the computer.
This morning, soon (half an hour?) after login, the kernel paniced with a reference to usb-storage (I’ll attach a picture). This was different from the lockups with the stock Precise (3.2) kernel: with them I never had any panics shown (only the frozen desktop) and the system had to be powered off to reboot, whereas with the panic here I could reboot using the chassis reset button.
There’s some USB activity in syslog just prior to the panic (Jan 7 at around 10:50), but I wasn’t using any USB devices at the time. I have used them with this kernel previously though, without issues, and currently am too (to transfer the panic picture from my phone). There’s a memory card reader/USB port panel (Akasa AK-ICR-17) permanently plugged into internal USB 2 and 3.
@guarinex70 Sorry I don’t speak Spanish, so I’m working with what Google Translate tells me you said. Yes, the flashrom parameter to write the ROM file is -w, the video title shows the exact command I typed in for the procedure. And yes, that’s revision 2101 of the BIOS going in. I downloaded it from ASUS’s site: look for the product page for your motherboard if you have an ASUS, and the Download section there. For this board they’ve since released revision 2102 which I haven’t tried.
Still present on Precise today. I’m on an Asus M4A78-EM and a PS/2-connected keyboard, if that matters.
Solved!
On the ’Advanced’ page of the BIOS, there was a switch for the Onboard LAN Boot ROM, and by default it was set to disabled. I switched it on and can confirm that ATASX works on this board.
I now see the ATASX documentation does make a mention of this in passing, saying ”you have to activate the ability to boot from network card”. So this was a simple case of RTFM on my part. :)
I’d still be interested to know how if at all this’ll work with an SSD.
I’ve been thinking of getting an SSD with built-in encryption, such as the Kingston SSDNow V+ 100E Series. From what I gather, utilizing the encryption would require that the BIOS supports HDD passwords. This is what lead me to ATASX.
My current motherboard is an Asus M4A78-EM with the latest available AMIBIOS for it, revision 2101.
For all appearances, I’ve successfully configured the ATASX.ROM module for my setup, managed to embed it into the main BIOS ROM using mmtool, replacing the existing PCI ethernet module (10EC:8168) with it and flashed the resulting ROM file into my BIOS chip.
Yet, during the boot, there’s no indication that the extension is in fact there: the prompt for security setup doesn’t appear and, when listing the harddisks, POST doesn’t say anything about the security extension as it does in the example images.
Did I read the documentation wrong when I thought this method didn’t involve burning an EEPROM? Have I made some error in the process, or is it just that the AMIBIOS for this motherboard somehow isn’t compatible with ATASX?
And in the end, would even having support for ATA security enable me to utilize the built-in encryption on modern SSDs? I only came to think of this when I read in another thread there’s a user with an SSD for whom ATASX apparently doesn’t work (if I’m reading the Google translation right).