Lenovo Thinkpad L490 + Intel nvme SSD 760p

Original issue

The original issue was posted on reddit by /u/Kronikaetor and is available here.

Summary

Kronikaetor has an in-warranty Thinkpad L490. Initially shipped with freedos, he installed Ubuntu 19.04 until it reached EOL, then attempted to install 20.04 at which point his laptop refused to run stably. He attempted:

Installation of 18.04
Installation of 20.04

But had no success, each attempt resulted in an OS that would work momentarily, and then gnome would crash.

Diagnostics

Required packages

curl (for downloading logs and iso files)
netcat (for shipping logs to seashells)
genisoimage (to produce bootable bios update USB)
unzip (to extract zips on the terminal)

To install these on ubuntu:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install \
genisoimage \
curl \
netcat \
unzip

Logs

Please make sure to install Required packages before following this process.

During diagnostics on a live usb we ran the following commands to ship logs to seashells:

# Capture static logs once for later consumption
sudo dmidecode | nc seashells.io 1337
sudo lscpi | nc seashells.io 1337
# Stream logs until machine crashes
sudo dmesg -w | nc seashells.io 1337
sudo journalctl -b -f | nc seashells.io

Running any of the above commands will produce output like so:

$ sudo journalctl -b -f | nc seashells.io 1337
serving at https://seashells.io/v/s5SeWhbp

The url it posts in stdout can visited later for log capture - logs should be captured as soon as possible as the links are not permanent. In order to save logs to a file, substitue the /v/ in the url to a /p/ and curl it to a file:

curl https://seashells.io/p/s5SeWhbp > journalctl.log

Firmware Updates

To ensure BIOS firmware was not the issue, we chose to perform a bios update.

Thinkpad L490 BIOS Updates

Please make sure to install Required packages before following this process.

The L490 does not have a CD drive, and yet the only way Lenovo provide to update firmware outside of Windows is a non-USB iso file available (available at time of writing here). Thanks Lenovo.

Before blindly following this guide, you should ensure you have downloaded the correct iso for your hardware by entering your serial on lenovo's website, and be VERY careful with the dd command listed below

To make this work with USB we had to utilise a tool called geteltorino to pull a USB bootable el torino disk image out of the iso, and then write it to USB:

# Download iso file
curl https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles/r0zuj12wd.iso -o r0zuj12wd.iso
# extract el torino file from iso file
geteltorito r0zuj12wd.iso > bios.img
# On the assumption your usb device is at /dev/sdb (verify with sudo gdisk -l prior to running this command!!!!)
sudo dd if=bios.img of=/dev/sdb bs=1M
# sync disk before unplugging
sync

This successfully updated the BIOS, however did not resolve the issue.

Intel nvme SSD790 firmware Updates

Please make sure to install Required packages before following this process.

Lenovo do provide firmware updates for this SSD, however again they are only available in Windows guise. Intel themselves do, however, provide a linux-friendly USB-Bootable iso image here. This can be downloaded, extracted, and written to usb:

### Download zip
curl https://downloadmirror.intel.com/29248/eng/FirmwareUpdateTool_v3_0_8.zip -o FirmwareUpdateTool_v3_0_8.zip
### unzip it
unzip FirmwareUpdateTool_v3_0_8.zip
# On the assumption your usb device is at /dev/sdb (verify with sudo gdisk -l prior to running this command!!!!)
sudo dd if=issdfut_64_3.0.8.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1m
# sync disk before unplugging
sync

Unfortunately, the same bug that we are trying to fix seemingly causes the linux-based updater to fail. If you have access to another machine with a spare m.2 nvme slot available, however, this step may still be useful in resolving your issue and so will be left here.