Modern Intel Firmware Tool ✨

This is a new utility to analyze and edit firmware images for Intel platforms.

Based on knowledge from me_cleaner, MEAnalyzer and related research, intel_fw is written from scratch in Rust, allowing for integration with other projects, including a programmatic API.

Development

To run the CLI via cargo directly, remember to add arguments after an extra --; i.e., to print the general help, invoke cargo run --relase -- -h, or, for a subcommand, e.g. cargo run --relase -- me clean -h.

This tool uses the clap command line argument parser in derive mode. To familiarize yourself with Rust and common approaches to CLI tools, take a look at the Rust CLI book.

For more understanding, see also any of these additional resources:

• https://rust-cli-recommendations.sunshowers.io/handling-arguments.html
• https://github.com/kyclark/command-line-rust
• https://tucson-josh.com/posts/rust-clap-cli/
• https://www.rustadventure.dev/introducing-clap/clap-v4/parsing-arguments-with-clap

Milestones

• bootstrap a new, general CLI, intel_fw, with an me subcommand
  • mimic the me_cleaner CLI, using similar+same arguments and switches for compatibility
• port the logic to Rust, using me_cleaner-edited images as test fixtures
  • NOTE: committing the test fixtures would be big and a potential license issue; instead, add notes on how to reproduce them, via public vendor images and extraction utilities (e.g. from Lenovo)
  • step 1: port core logic to produce the same output as me_cleaner for Lenovo ThinkPad X230 + X270
  • step 2: full parity with me_cleaner
• expand the documentation with a higher-level on Intel platform boot flows
  • document how the Intel data structures work, in prose
  • document how to add support for more platforms and variants
• work out a reusable library, i.e., a Rust crate for https://crates.io/
• sync up; https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner has another patch that coreboot is missing, doing rework and adding ME Gen 1 support