(UEFI) Dell XPS 15z L511z modded BIOS - and HOWTO

[kasar]

haha, well, I want to get the raid feature working and relase the v6 version of my L502X bios modifications

I made some changes since the v5, specially in the advanced security module, bringing up new options and like modify the asset tag or get rid of the computrace option by just switching options.

raid feature will be of course something nice to have and keep people from the nbr forums happy

thank you for all the help Brabbelbla

[follow_me]

Sorry for a delay, had a long backup/restore cycle
I have tested the latest firmware :

- RAID mode works, I was able to create stripe array with 2 disks
- Legacy boot wortks, was able to boot Linux from this disk
- UEFI boot works , was able to boot UEFI Shell from this disk and it's fs was mapped
- TRIM is NOT WORKING , tested by removing file, forcing Linux to trim filesystem and then reading physical sectors of underlying SSD , and there was data,not zeroes as it shold be with trim working

* UPDATE *
as it turned out TRIM should be tested with the latest WINDOWS driver , I will make some addition tests to clarify weather TRIM working or not

To be able to boot from Raid disk it is required to add boot record using bcfg
for the RAID mode device handle is
UnknownDevice ExtendedSCSIPassThru EfiAtaPassThruProtocolGuid UnknownDevice UnknownDevice PCIIO DevicePath(PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1F,0x2))

and there is one small issue - I have 3 ssd drives , one of whitch is replaced stock DVD-Drive , and I can't find a handle of it in RAID mode, may be it was just renamed to something else


so - most features are working with a little bcfg magic , TRIM, unfortunately, not

I will be glad to answer any questiong you have, or make some additional tests if neeeded

BTW: @brabbelbla do you have any other thoughts about TRIM to be enabled ? Can I have a FW with a fancy RAID menus ?

One more thing @brabbelbla - can you please replace SystemIsaFloppyDxe.efi with this one https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1694672/FfsDxe.efi ?

[Brabbelbla]

@follow_me
Thanks very much for testing. It is not really clear whether you have tested TRIM with the Windows drivers now, but I guess not.

About the 3rd SSD: with me (with the actual optical drive still in place), when I enable RAID mode it does not get an SCSI device adress but remains reported as SATA. Is that the case with you, too? Was it visible in the RAID OROM? Anyway, I don't think there is much to be done. There are no hidden settings for the SATA ports and the values for the settings that are there are the same as those for ports 0 and 1.

No other thoughts on TRIM. What do you mean with 'fancy RAID menus'? A proper UEFI driver? Maybe it is possible, I have seen some Lenovo notebooks with a UEFI RAID driver. Maybe, with some magic, you could get that one integrated in our firmware. If you are interested, I think it was the Lenovo T530. Phoenix SCT as well, but I think it is UEFI 2.31.

It is actually quite easy to replace the module yourself, using PhoenixTool, but I was curious so I did it anyway. It works, the driver is loaded, firmware volumes mapped. BUT THE CRAZY BUGGY EDITED SHELL WOULDN'T LET ME ADD SOMETHING AS A BOOT OPTION. Raaaahhh. It would not find the file. Nor let me MANUALLY add the boot variable for the internal shell. I tried this, the final part is a long series of hex values:

setvar boot000a -bs -rt -nv =00010000180049006E007400650072006E0061006C0020005300680065006C006C00000004061400B7D67AC51505A8409D21551652854E377FFF0400

Where I took the diagnostics entry from the nvram dump and edited the text and the GUID. But it said it was the incorrect format or whatever. Cutting the data to 00010000180049006E didn't give the error, so I guess there is some limit as to how long the hex data can be. Grrr. The unedited but not so useful unedited old-style shell would run applications fine from the FV.

Of course, the good news is that replacing the driver works and it should enable you to do what you wanted to do.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tav5klc1w79oor...EPLACE.zip

And btw, shouldn't it be -b instead of -p?

Another btw, I also tried adding FfsDxe as a new driver. Seemed to go well, until I wanted to flash. The flash utility didn't even run.

[follow_me]

@brabbelbla tested with linux driver, not Windows one , will test it this weekend

about 3rd ssd - it is visible in the RAID OROM and can be added to array , but I dont want to do it because it is conected to slow (sata2) port
It is doesn't mapped as sata drive and I cant find it's handle


About Driver - I read on the win raid forum about modifiet Raid SataDriver and may be it worth a look
here is the link http://www.win-raid.com/t19f13-Intel-EFI...dules.html

About ffs driver

did you tried to add with bcfg ? or only with setvar ?

What I want to propose
I can build modified version of ffs driver with built in bcfg command which will add custom menu entries (buil in console and any other we want) and modify nvram to enable UEFI boot at start
test builds will be available this friday, I think

I propose to replace built in shell with a custom one

Any suggestions are welcomed

I have a shell where -p is for paggination

[Brabbelbla]

I tried both. bcfg would not find the file, setvar would not add such long hex data. The modified shell wouldn't even run applications from the FV, while the unmodified old-style shell would. Of course, you seem to have a different modified shell, so things may work for you. Could you share yours? I will at least give you the one I use, it was edited by... dzamar or Slice, I think over at projectosx.

I will look at the UEFI RAID driver later.

BTW, I would love the pre-OS environment to be displayed in native resolution. If cou can manage that with your custom driver, sooner or later, I will be forever grateful

[follow_me]

I tried both. bcfg would not find the file, setvar would not add such long hex data.

bcfg would not find the file - when ? when file added or when system booted ?

because I'v experimented before and it was added but not found on start because driver was not loaded at the time

[Brabbelbla]

When I added the boot option. It's so simple, can't think of what was wrong:

bcfg boot add a [firmare volume]:\C57[blablabla...].efi "Internal Shell"

[follow_me]

When I added the boot option. It's so simple, can't think of what was wrong:

bcfg boot add a [firmare volume]:\C57[blablabla...].efi "Internal Shell"

I know what's wrong - dmazar's shell thinks that internal image is not executable

Other shells do not have bcfg command built in, so we were tied up to dmazar's shell. I've decided to fix this issue

I've built bcfg as standalone app , and now we can use any shell to add boot records

It deppends on UnicodeCollate interface , so you need to get one , because we dont have any installed , and I built one for English language. It should be loaded prior using bcfg

[Brabbelbla]

Nice one

Btw, I took a look at a UEFI RAID driver. I highly doubt the one from win-raid will work, but I was mistaken in my previous post. It was not some Lenovo machine, it was the Inspiron 7720 that has a module called RaidEfiRom in it, which, given it comes from Dell from an SCT firmware (UEFI 2.31 though), I give higher chances of working. There were two GOP drivers present, too, and a UEFI driver for the ethernet NIC. I gave RaidEfiRom a first try, but it didn't load. If you are interested, the FFS structure is attached.

[follow_me]

Nice one

Btw, I took a look at a UEFI RAID driver. I highly doubt the one from win-raid will work, but I was mistaken in my previous post. It was not some Lenovo machine, it was the Inspiron 7720 that has a module called RaidEfiRom in it, which, given it comes from Dell from an SCT firmware (UEFI 2.31 though), I give higher chances of working. There were two GOP drivers present, too, and a UEFI driver for the ethernet NIC. I gave RaidEfiRom a first try, but it didn't load. If you are interested, the FFS structure is attached.

how about to take a look at alienware's m17x r3 firmware - it has almost identical hardware and RAID enabled from the box

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Tested bcfg with ffs driver - it can'not add boot entry because it cant get the path for it
will try to patch bcfg