Coreboot configuration

[cassidyjames]

Problem

Requested by @Sean-StarLabs

Proposal

One thing I'd really like to do, so every base is covered, is put some way of changing coreboot settings into switchboard, maybe next to the fwupd integration.

This was my "5-minute" approach:
https://github.com/StarLabsLtd/coreboot-configurator

Technically, it's a relatively easy job, and it could be written in bash in a minute or so, to work with any coreboot setup. Something like:

Check if /sys/devices/virtual/dmi/id/bios_vendor == "coreboot"
Get possible settings with nvramtool -a
For each setting, get the possible options with nvramtool -e $setting
Give these options to the use, if they change, write them with nvramtool -w $setting=$option

Prior Art

We have firmware updates here, and this feels at least tangential.

[cassidyjames]

For an example of what is configurable:

https://github.com/StarLabsLtd/coreboot/blob/master/src/mainboard/starlabs/labtop/cmos.default

This looks to be things you'd usually see in a BIOS menu, and @Sean-StarLabs pointed out they require a reboot to apply as well. So there's some design work to decide if and how to integrate them.

The reason for configuring Coreboot in session is that Coreboot does not have a menu to configure these from the boot side—so those machines need a way to configure them in the OS. An option is to ship a separate Coreboot configurator app thing, but it would feel more integrated here.