[u-u] How to brick your laptop

[Dan Astoorian]

On Tue, 02 Feb 2016 12:46:51 EST, "D'Arcy J.M. Cain" writes:
> On Tue, 2 Feb 2016 10:51:32 -0500
> arocker at Vex.Net wrote:
> > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/02/delete_efivars_linux/
> > 
> > A somewhat implausible scenario, but it's clearly happened.
> 
> I'm having a hard time believing this one.  Linux may have some silly
> designs but if you boot up a CD then what's on the disk can't matter
> can it?  A brand new drive also does not have those files but you can
> still install an OS on it.

The problem appears to be that Linux exposes UEFI variables in the
firmware using a pseudo-filesystem interface, and some BIOSes respond
less gracefully than others to having all of their UEFI variables
deleted.

-- 
Dan Astoorian, Systems Administrator
Engineering Computing Facility
University of Toronto