Flashing From/Interacting With Non-Free Hardware

[CrimsonCube]

@irvinewade

@CrimsonCube

can you explain please?

My understanding is that the boot goes straight from boot ROM (read-only, can’t be compromised in the manner contemplated here) to code loaded from the eMMC drive (software). So there’s no writeable firmware to compromise. It is of course all in the choice of terms. What I am calling “not firmware” someone else may choose to call firmware.

Thats interesting, and comforting, though is this where the firmware discussed here including u-boot resides?

Also it seems like it can be flashed, so could you clarify what you mean by non-writable?

@irvinewade

@CrimsonCube

it would have been nice if purism would have set up a recovery partition or prompted me to set one up.

Yes, with the benefit of hindsight.

Yep.

@irvinewade

I guess a recovery partition would have been controversial, given the small size of the main disk (the eMMC drive), and given that for most customers recovery via uuu is acceptable.

Also, at the time of initial release there was no support for booting from the µSD card - and hence they could not sensibly have prompted you to set up a recovery partition on the µSD card (where there can be oodles of available disk space for a recovery partition).

Those are all good points.

@irvinewade

@CrimsonCube

I trust the firmware on the internal eMMC more than the proprietary blob or silicon on the closed-source SD card.

I don’t see why. The eMMC drive contains its own computer running closed-source code, in order to implement the eMMC drive. The standards for eMMC may be open but any actual implementations are just as proprietary as anything else that is closed, just as blobby, as far as I know.

Maybe we are talking at cross-purposes though.

I think I had a misunderstanding, I thought the only closed source blobs the L5 had were for the 4G modem, because purism could not find a manufacturer willing to work with them. After looking into it I realized I was wrong. Though I have the understanding the Purism has looked specifically with manufactures who are willing to work with them (lowers risk in my opinion), and stores proprietary firmware on a separate flash chip, I think your more or less correct here. Any differences assessing the threat level would be down to the use case of an eMMC drive vs an SD card. Where and SD card is lower cost and likely to move from computer to computer, the eMMC drive is likely to stay in one machine and is higher cost.

@irvinewade

@FranklyFlawless

under warranty

I don’t see why it would be under warranty. The OP broke his/her phone doing something that was expressly advised against by at least one other forum user.

Sending it back for Purism to reflash (if inside the US), and paying for that, is likely to be cheaper than a second phone though.

Guess I will find out