Install Libreboot on Lenovo ThinkPad T440p

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This document will teach you how to install Libreboot, on your Lenovo ThinkPad T440p laptop motherboard. Libreboot is a Free Software project that replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware.

Minifree now sells the Libreboot T480, instead of the Libreboot T440p. See: https://minifree.org/product/libreboot-t480/

NOTE: Libreboot standardises on flashprog now, as of 27 January 2024, which is a fork of flashrom. The reason why was explained, in the Libreboot 20240225 release

PLEASE READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE INSTALLING, OR YOU MAY BRICK YOUR MACHINE!! - Please click the link and follow the instructions there, before flashing. For posterity, here is the link again.

Read the Ivybridge/Haswell common guide if you want more information. All of the following instructions assume that you’ve cloned lbmk and are operating from the root of that project. To do so, run

git clone https://codeberg.org/libreboot/lbmk
cd lbmk

You can now follow the rest of the instructions.

Please follow this prior to flashing, or you may brick your machine.

Please inject vendor files prior to flashing. You can also use this guide to change the built-in MAC address for your Intel Gigabit Ethernet device; doing so is advisable, because otherwise you will have a default, generic MAC address.

You can use dd to easily split your rom into the two separate portions for external flashing.

dd if=libreboot.rom of=top.rom bs=1M skip=8
dd if=libreboot.rom of=bottom.rom bs=1M count=8

Flash the top chip with top.rom, and tho bottom chip with bottom.rom. Don’t worry about knowing which chip is which on a standard setup; flashprog will let you know if the image size is incorrect for the chip you’re flashing.

Start by removing the back cover screws and the main battery.

You can then remove the back cover by sliding it off. Next you need to:

• Unplug the cmos battery
• Unplug and unroute the fan cable
• Unplug and unroute the black LED cable
• Remove all visible screws

Note: the ultrabay screw will loosen, but not come out of the assembly

Now you can pull up around the sides of the bottom assembly to release it. Pull it upwards and lift it open to the front of the machine like a clamshell. Make sure not to break the wires connecting the assembly to the rest of the machine.

You should now be able to see the two flash chips near the RAM.

You can now proceed to flashing this machine.

It has been reported by that thinkpad_acpi does not load correctly on the T440p.

If you encounter this, check this page for details as to how to fix this.

NOTE: As of Libreboot releases from May 2024 onward, the Intel MRC is no longer included for Haswell; MRC is a blob for raminit, but we now provide libre raminit. The following targets no longer exist in the build system:

• t440pmrc_12mb (use t440plibremrc_12mb instead)
• t440pbmrc_12mb (use t440plibremrc_12mb instead)
• w541mrc_12mb (use w541_12mb instead)
• w541bmrc_12mb (use w541_12mb instead)
• dell9020sff_12mb (use dell9020sff_nri_12mb instead)
• dell9020sffbmrc (use dell9020sff_nri_12mb instead)
• dell9020mt_12mb (use dell9020mt_nri_12mb instead)
• dell9020mtbmrc (use dell9020mt_nri_12mb instead)

This is written as errata because some users may still be using older release images but on the newer build system from May 2024 onward; you must use the Libreboot 20240225 release if you want to inject MRC and so on, for these older targets.

Libreboot’s binary blob reduction policy is very strict, and states: if a blob can be avoided, it must be avoided. Therefore, the MRC is removed on Haswell and Libreboot will only use the libre raminit (called NRI, short for Native Ram Initialisation).

Markdown file for this page: https://libreboot.org/docs/install/t440p_external.md

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