Thoughts dereferenced from the scratchpad noise.

Better UEFI Update Capsules for Open Source firmware

Published at August 27, 2026 · Sergii Dmytruk · 17 min read

A summary of the upcoming UEFI capsule updates, exploring areas that were in need of improvement and what has actually been done. The developments affect general usage and documentation, provide strong security guarantees, and enhance feedback during firmware updates. Additionally, a related subject of fwupd as a capsule delivery mechanism on FreeBSD, Qubes OS and Windows is also covered....

Categories: firmware security

Dasharo Compatible with MSI PRO Z690-A/Z790-P Release v1.1.7/v0.9.5

Published at August 13, 2026 · Michał Żygowski · 14 min read

The latest Dasharo firmware release for MSI PRO Z690-A (v1.1.7) and MSI PRO Z790-P (v0.9.5) is here. This release brings preliminary SMI Transfer Monitor support, a new Platform Setup Menu with experimental CPU overclocking options, XMP improvements, and many other fixes and enhancements....

Categories: firmware security

Prospects of TrenchBoot on ARM

Published at August 12, 2026 · Sergii Dmytruk · 10 min read

A look at DRTM on ARM: where it stands compared to Intel TXT/AMD SKINIT and what will it take to run TrenchBoot on AArch64. How can TrenchBoot support both x86 and ARM architectures at the same time....

Categories: firmware security

MSI PRO B850-P WIFI Dasharo v0.9.0 Released

Published at July 30, 2026 · Michał Żygowski · 12 min read

Dasharo v0.9.0 for the MSI PRO B850-P WIFI is now available, marking the first release of open-source firmware for a modern AMD Ryzen desktop platform based on coreboot and AMD openSIL. This post covers the features delivered in the release, the known issues, an openness score comparison against the vendor firmware, and answers to the most frequently asked questions from the community....

Categories: firmware

MSI PRO B850-P coreboot port: fTPM, fast boot, and cross-OS validation

Published at July 2, 2026 · Michał Żygowski · 26 min read

Continuing the MSI PRO B850-P coreboot port series, this post covers the resolution of the amdgpu hard fault that required the nomodeset workaround, AMD firmware TPM support with ROM Armor 3 integration, Promontory21 configuration improvements, EZ Debug LED support, fast boot via APOB memory context restore, and the cross-OS validation campaign that confirmed Linux and Windows 11 fully operational....

Categories: firmware

MSI PRO B850-P coreboot port: GFX init, Promontory21, and ACPI improvements

Published at June 3, 2026 · Michał Żygowski · 21 min read

Continuing the MSI PRO B850-P coreboot port series, this post covers the completion of GFX initialization in Phoenix openSIL, full Promontory21 I/O chipset support, AMD P-state CPPC enablement, AMD GOP driver integration in EDK2, and a range of ACPI, eSPI, and PCIe improvements that bring Linux to a fully graphical boot....

Categories: firmware

Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 Dasharo v0.9.0 Released

Published at May 15, 2026 · Michał Żygowski · 8 min read

Dasharo v0.9.0 for the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 server board is now available, bringing initial open-source firmware support based on coreboot 25.12 and AMD openSIL for the Turin processor family. This post covers the features included in the release, the known issues, testing environment improvements for AMD platforms, and a commentary on the platform openness score....

Categories: firmware

Stop rewriting your pipelines - achieving CI portability with Docker and Taskfile

Published at April 27, 2026 · Maciej Pijanowski · 18 min read

After years of reacting to CI platform changes and rewriting pipeline definitions, we decided to research a better approach. This post describes our evaluation of different solutions and why we settled on treating CI systems as interchangeable orchestration layers, with build logic living in portable Docker containers orchestrated by Taskfile. We plan to adopt this approach more widely and see how it holds up in practice....

Categories: miscellaneous

MSI PRO B850-P coreboot port: USB initialization and AM5 IP block porting

Published at April 27, 2026 · Michał Żygowski · 17 min read

Continuing the MSI PRO B850-P coreboot port series, this post covers the porting of CCX and FCH IP blocks to AMD Phoenix AM5 in openSIL, including nearly 1000 lines of missing USB initialization code. We describe the RcMgr MMIO fix, the DF and APOB analysis, early GFX attempts, and the integration of automated test infrastructure....

Categories: firmware

What Open Source Firmware Can Learn from Apple Pre-OS Security

Published at April 24, 2026 · Piotr Król · 17 min read

Apple Platform Security Guide is the most comprehensive platform security documentation in the industry. Instead of dismissing it as closed-source irrelevance, we read it through a firmware engineer's lens and extracted transferable security patterns for x86 and ARM open source firmware. Here is what we found about boot chains, Secure Enclave architecture, and five opportunities for Dasharo and coreboot....

Categories: firmware security

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Better UEFI Update Capsules for Open Source firmware

Dasharo Compatible with MSI PRO Z690-A/Z790-P Release v1.1.7/v0.9.5

Prospects of TrenchBoot on ARM

MSI PRO B850-P WIFI Dasharo v0.9.0 Released

MSI PRO B850-P coreboot port: fTPM, fast boot, and cross-OS validation

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