Solved Thinkpad X230 crashes on suspend after BIOS update

Hi,

I updated the BIOS of my Lenovo Thinkpad X230 to incooperate some security updates (Intel AMT, Spectre...). Since then suspend ( acpiconf -s 3) is not working anymore. The machine just crashes and restarts. Suspend/resume was working fine all the time before the update. I'm running 11.2-RELEASE-p7.

Has someone had similar experiences? I'm also writing this here to warn other users.

Old BIOS version (where suspend/resume worked flawlessly): G2ETA7WW 2.67, Embedded Controller Version 1.14
New BIOS version (supend crashes machine): G2ETB4WW 2.74, Embedded Controller Version 1.14

Tried to downgrade the BIOS to 2.67 but this is not possible. Downgrade to 2.70 is possible but suspend is broken there too.

Changelog:
Code:
<2.74>
 UEFI: 2.74 / ECP: 1.14
- [Important] Update includes a security fix.
- (Fix) Fixed an issue where BIOS silent update might fail with system account.

<2.73>
 UEFI: 2.73 / ECP: 1.14
-[Important] Security fix addresses LEN-22133 Speculative Execution Side Channel
             Variants 4 and 3a (CVE-2018-3639, CVE-2018-3640). Refer to Lenovo's
             Security Advisory page for additional information.
             (https://support.lenovo.com/product_security/home)

<2.72>
 UEFI: 2.72 / ECP: 1.14
- [Important] Security fix addresses LEN-19568 Intel Active Management Technology MEBx 
              Access Control Bypass.
- [Important] Update includes a security fix.
- (Fix) Fixed an issue where network boot might happened at reboot after resume from 
        suspend by Wake On LAN.
- (Fix) Fixed an issue where POST 191 error might occur when only SVP change is 
        requested by WMI.

<2.71>
 UEFI: 2.71 / ECP: 1.14
- [Important] Enhancement to address CVE-2017-5715.

<2.70>
 UEFI: 2.70 / ECP: 1.14
- [Important] Update includes a security fix.
              (Note)
              If the UEFI BIOS has been updated to version 2.70 or higher, it is no longer
              able to roll back to the version before 2.70 for security improvement.
- (Fix) Fixed an issue where the computer might not start to update UEFI BIOS 
        but go into suspend state when user performs UEFI BIOS Update Utility or 
        BIOS Update CD.
        (Note)
        In case user experienced the described symptom, press Fn key or 
        power button once to resume from suspend then continue to update BIOS.

<2.68>
 UEFI: 2.68 / ECP: 1.14
- (Fix) Fix an issue where UEFI BIOS update will be started at resume from 
        sleep state when BIOS update utility is executed in unattended mode
        and the computer goes to sleep state before system reboot/shutdown.
 
I updated the BIOS of my Lenovo Thinkpad X230 to incooperate some security updates (Intel AMT, Spectre...).
Does this laptop have a TPM module? You might want to try turning that off in the BIOS. Flashing the BIOS and loading the defaults may have turned it on.
 
Thanks, SirDice trying to help. Just curious, is there a particular reason that an enabled TPM module could prevent suspend/resume other than having another device enabled which loads kernel code?

I verified the BIOS settings again and TPM is disabled (Security Chip = Deactivated) like before the BIOS update. I also resetted the BIOS to factory defaults and reconfigured everything again (i.e. disabling all unused devices like Bluetooth, Touchpad and stuff that I don't need). But this didn't help.

In the meantime I prepared a FreeBSD-12.0-RELEASE-amd64-mini-memstick.img. Fortunately suspend is working fine when I boot from USB stick. But resume is not working. Maybe on resume the system tries to load something from the USB stick which is not available after suspend. I will try to update to 12.0...
 
Just curious, is there a particular reason that an enabled TPM module could prevent suspend/resume other than having another device enabled which loads kernel code?
To be honest, I don't know how or why. I picked up some issues in relation to TPM and suspend. Apparently that causes problems and the advice is to turn TPM off.
 
I marked this thread as solved since suspend/resume is working after upgrading to 12.0-RELEASE.
 
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