Ubuntu 17.10 May Corrupt the BIOS on Some Lenovo, Acer, Dell, and Other Laptops

Canonical has decided to temporarily remove the download link to Ubuntu 17.10 due leaving a notice reading:

The download of Ubuntu 17.10 is currently discouraged due to an issue on certain Lenovo laptops. Once fixed this download will be enabled again.

The issue that many user are reported being unable to save BIOS settings or boot with USB in several Lenovo Laptops with many topics about this issue on Lenovo Forums. The installed operating system still boots normally, so many affected people may not have even noticed.

Based on the bug report it seems to be related to the enablement of intel-spi-* drivers (Intel Serial Flash drive) in the kernel (CONFIG_SPI_INTEL_SPI_PCI option), and this could also affect Ubuntu 16.04 with HWE kernels. The fix is to disable the driver in the kernel, and Canonical will soon release images. The downside of not using the driver are likely null or minimal, since according to the bug report “it’s unlikely anyone is actually doing anything which requires this driver”.

If you’ve been using isorepin.sh script to run the latest Ubuntu version/Linux kernel, you may also be impacted.

The current list of impacted system include:

Lenovo B40-70, B50-70, B50-80
Lenovo Flex-3, Flex-10
Lenovo G40-30, G50-70, G50-80
Lenovo S20-30
Lenovo U31-70
Lenovo Y50-70, Y70-70
Lenovo Yoga Thinkpad (20C0)
Lenovo Yoga 2 11″ – 20332
Lenovo Z50-70, Z51-70
Lenovo ideapad 100-15IBY
Acer Aspire E5-771G
Acer TravelMate B113
Toshiba Satellite S55T-B5233
Dell Insperion (with Insyde Software BIOS)

It’s likely other models / brands may also have the same problem. The bug report also include a link to a temporary workaround.

Via Linuxium

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.