I finally updated the EC and the electrical sound after power off has gone away but the battery still drains while powered off. It goes from 100% to 0% in less than 3 days. I’m on PureOS with apt full-upgrade done and no pending updates.
I have a second Librem 14 which I bought at the same time but it runs Qubes and it does not exhibit this behavior. That battery maintains its charge.
Interesting, do they use the most updated boot firmware too?
I believe I’m using the regular BIOS as opposed to PureBoot. If it matters, how can I check?
On Coreboot, the boot logo is the Purism logo like the Super key. The latest version is 4.20.1.
Use the first set of instructions in the following link to update Coreboot, or alternatively, you can also switch to PureBoot.
Since you have two Librem 14s, maybe try swapping the batteries to see if one of them is faulty.
How can I update Coreboot on the Librem 14 that’s running Qubes? There is some discussion of it here:
but doesn’t the procedure I use need to take my particular hardware into account?
Also are apt, Coreboot, and EC all of the updates I should be watching for?
Well you can Burn a GNU OS in a Live USB then perform the purism scriptish to update coreboot.
Will the Coreboot update script work just as well from a LiveUSB? Will I need to enter the laptop’s serial number manually?
Is it possible to do this offline via flashrom?
Yes
No
Yes but becarefull in this way. I recommend you the Purism Script to update the coreboot.
I took the bottom cover off the Librem 14 with the battery charge problem and found that it is still making the electrical whine when turned off and unplugged despite having upgraded its EC and Coreboot. In a quiet room with the cover off I can hear it clearly from about 2 feet away. It seems to be loudest over the small electrical components that look manually soldered in under the black tape that also covers the wifi antenna wires. Disconnecting the battery eliminates the sound. I tried disconnecting the wifi chip and both fans but it did not change the sound.
I tried swapping batteries with my second Librem 14 which runs Qubes and the sound was greatly reduced but still present. With the swapped battery I could only hear the sound with my ear almost pressed against the area described above. I wonder if the difference in sound could be due to the different charge of the two batteries. The “louder” battery was almost fully discharged and the “quieter” battery was about 90% full. The Librem 14 with Qubes installed is dead quiet with either battery. No electrical whine there whatsoever even with my ear in the right spot.
Anything else I should try?
It is a big shame from Purism for that ugly repair. I really tired that gnu+linux company is gaming with gnu+linux user, as Pine64 does with theys trash electronics too.
I am very confident that with @francois-techene in front everything will change well for the free software user.
Contact Purism support. That unit sounds defective — some of those post-production-PCB changes were horrible solder jobs.
I am glad swapping batteries seemed to help you out, although I would contact Purism support too.
On the Librem 14, there are only three firmware images worth considering at any point in time:
I always use a live USB with PureOS to handle low-level tasks like these. Usually I flash the latest PureOS image using balenaEtcher.
Unfortunately the swapped battery also drains its charge rapidly in the problematic Librem 14. The non-problematic Librem 14 still holds its charge after the battery swap.
I’m having new power problems with the problematic laptop since the battery swap. It won’t turn on without being plugged into AC and it dies if I turn it on while plugged in and then unplug it while running. Battery shows 70% charge. This didn’t happen with either laptop before swapping batteries.
Can I swap the NVMe devices between the two laptops and expect the OSes (one PureOS and the other Qubes) to work just the same?
Definitely contact Purism support about the problematic laptop, since both batteries clearly function just fine.
Yes, I believe so as long as both laptops use Coreboot.
The two laptops each use a different version of Coreboot so it sounds like I should be able to swap the NVMe drives.
If the laptops used Pureboot or one Coreboot and the other Pureboot this wouldn’t work? I would have thought that wouldn’t come into play.
The issue with PureBoot is that if you have configured it to sign hashes for the boot partition, it will no longer match or be valid if you swap drives with a different laptop.
… and the root partition too if you have chosen to keep hashes for verification of selected files on the root partition.
Right, and any other configurations not mentioned. I referred to the boot partition only because PureBoot currently requires it to be unencrypted, so it was an easy example to mention.
I updated Coreboot on my second Librem 14 and for the system serial number I chose:
Extracted from your local system (System Serial Number)
but I think I remember that option being populated with the actual serial number when I ran this on the other laptop. How can I check to see if the serial number was recorded properly?