BIOS-salasanan poisto IBM ThinkPad T23 -kannettavassa tietokoneessa

Vastuuvapauslauseke: Tee tämä vain omalla riskilläsi! En ole vastuussa mikäli vahingossa rikot laitteesi tai jotakin pahempaa sattuu.
Tee aina asianmukaiset varotoimet työskennellessäsi sähkölaitteiden parissa estääksesi sähköiskun vaaran.

IBM on lyhenne sanoista "International Business Machines" (suomeksi kansainväliset liike-elämän laitteet) ja se on varsin osuva kuvaus ThinkPad-kannettavista, joita IBM alkujaan tuotti 13 vuotta (vuodesta 1992 vuoteen 2005) ja jonka oikeudet kiinalainen Lenovo sittemmin osti. Koska IBM:n ThinkPad-kannettavat ovat enemmän liike-elämän käyttöön suunniteltuja kuin tavalliset kannettavat tietokoneet, niissä on varsin hyvä suojaus. ThinkPad-kannettavassa voi olla jopa kolme erilaista salasanaa: käynnistyssalasana (englanniksi power-on password, lyhennetään POP), pääkäyttäjän/valvojan salasana (englanniksi supervisor password, lyhennetään SVP) ja kovalevyn salasana (englanniksi hard disk drive password, lyhennetään HDP). Vaikkakin kovalevyn salasanan voi "ohittaa" vaihtamalla kovalevyn toiseen, kaksi jäljelläolevaa salasanaa ovat huomattavasti vaikeampia murtaa.

Helmikuussa 2012 en omistanut ainuttakaan ThinkPadia (nykyään omistan kolme, joista yksi on päivittäisessä käytössä oleva kannettavani). Olin kuullut monia hyviä asioita ThinkPadeista ja todellakin se, että ne ovat "ainoita kannettavia, jotka on hyväksytty Kansainvälisen avaruusaseman käyttöön" (englanninkielisen Wikipedian ThinkPad-artikkelin mukaan) on ehdottomasti jotakin. Onnistuin nappaamaan käytetyn IBM ThinkPad T23 -kannettavan alle 30€:n hintaan (postikuluineen) Huuto.netistä myöhäis-helmikuussa 2012. Se oli melko hyväkuntoinen, varsinkin alhaisen hinnan huomioon ottaen; jopa akku näytti toimivan kauemmin kuin viisi minuuttia! Ainoa varjopuoli oli kammottavan valvojan salasanan (SVP) olemassaolo.

Jos etsit lempihakukoneellasi Internetistä ohjeita valvojan salasanan poistoon IBM ThinkPad -kannettavasta, törmäät todennäköisesti yhteen näistä kolmesta asiasta:

1. Tekopyhiin ihmisiin, jotka syyttävät sinua varkaaksi ja kertovat, että BIOS-salasanojen poisto-ohjeiden kysyminen on laitonta/sivuston sääntöjä rikkovaa/molempia
2. Idiootteihin, jotka väittävät sen olevan mahdotonta
3. SoDoItYourself.com:in äärettömän monimutkaisiin ohjeisiin, joihin lukeutuu tinaamista ja muita pelottavia asioita

#1 ja #2 ovat ilmiselvästikin hevonpaskaa ja #3 on erittäin monimutkainen ja riskialtis mikäli et ole sähköinsinööri koulutukseltasi.

Onneksi on olemassa yksinkertainen tapa poistaa vanhempien ThinkPadien valvojan salasana (SVP). Tämän tavan on kuvaillut Le Chameau (joka muuten on ranskaa ja tarkoittaa "kamelia") SoDoItYourself.com:in artikkelin kommenttiosiossa. On myös olemassa kokonainen (englanninkielinen) Blogspot-blogi, joka on omistettu samalle tavalle. Tähän tapaan ei kuulu ollenkaan tinaamista ja riski, että ThinkPadistasi tulee äärettömän kallis paperipaino, on huomattavasti pienempi; paras osa on se, ettei sinun tarvitse ostaa mitään!

Aloitetaanpas, eikö vain?

Vaihe #1: Poista akku ja varmista, että laturi ei ole kytkettynä.

Vaihe #2: Etsi ATMEL-siru; ThinkPad T23 -mallissa tarvitsee poistaa RAM-muistipiirien kansi ja yksi muistipiiri päästäkseen käsiksi tuohon pienenpieneen (0,5mm x 0,3mm) siruun.

Vaihe #3: Aiheuta oikosulku kahden ATMEL-piirin "jalan" välille, riippuen ThinkPad-mallistasi, metalliesineen avulla (käytin itse erittäin pienen neulan tylppää päätä).
T23-mallissa oikosulku tulee aiheuttaa "jalkojen" 5 ja 6 välille, mutta malleissa, joissa on pienempi (8-jalkainen) siru, oikosulutettavat "jalat" ovat 3 ja 4! Tähän itse kompastuin; yritin epätoivoisesti aiheuttaa oikosulkua jalkojen 3 ja 4 välille, mutta se luonnollisestikaan ei tehnyt mitään. Katso tästä kaaviosta jalkojen numerointi.
Varmista myös, että pystyt turvallisesti poistamaan käyttämäsi metalliesineen "jalkojen" välistä, sillä joudut tekemään sen tietokoneen ollessa käynnissä.

Vaihe #4: Kytke kannettavaan tietokoneeseen virta.

Vaihe #5: Paina tarvittavaa näppäintä päästäksesi BIOS:iin; T23-mallissa oikea näppäin on F1. Yleisesti ottaen englanninkielinen teksti "Press <näppäimen nimigt; to access Setup" näkyy näytöllä samaan aikaan IBM:n logon kanssa tietokoneen käynnistyessä.

Vaihe #6: Huomaat, että BIOS:in lataaminen kestää tavallista kauemmin; tämä johtuu aiheuttamastasi oikosulusta. T23-mallisa näyttöön tulee virheilmoitus ("ERROR 0187: EAIA data access error"), jonka jälkeen F1-näppäintä tulee painaa kerran päästäkseen BIOS:iin oikeasti.

Vaihe #7: Nyt olet BIOS:issa, ja kahden "jalan" välillä on edelleen oikosulku. Mene "Password"-osioon (suom. Salasana) ja huomaat, että valvojan salasana on [Disabled] (suom. poistettu käytöstä). Älä hämäänny! Hankkiutuaksesi eroon tuntemattomasta valvojan salasanasta, sinun tulee antaa uusi salasana! Hullua mutta totta.
Käytä nuolinäppäimiä valitaksesi Supervisor Password -vaihtoehdon ja paina sitten Enter-näppäintä. Nyt sinua pyydetään antamaan uusi valvojan salasana. Anna jokin salasana — itse käytin salasanaa "1" — ja paina Enter-näppäintä valitaksesi "Re-enter password" -kentän (suom. Anna salasana uudelleen). Anna uusi valvojan salasana uudelleen ja ennen Enter-näppäimen painamista tallentaaksesi uuden valvojan salasanan, poista metalliesine, joka aiheuttaa oikosulun kahden ATMEL-piirin jalan välillä!
Tehtyäsi sen, paina Enter-näppäintä ja uusi valvojan salasana — jonka tiedät — tallentuu. Sitten paina F10 tallentaaksesi muutokset ja käynnistääksesi koneen uudelleen.

Vaihe #8: Nyt olet valmis! Jos olet kuten minä ja haluat hankkitua valvojan salasanasta lopullisesti eroon, käynnistä kannettava tietokone taas kerran (normaalisti, aiheuttamatta mitään oikosulkua minnekään), paina tarvittavaa näppäintä (F1 T23-mallissa) päästäksesi BIOS:iin, valitse "Password"-valikko ja valitse vaihtoehdon Supervisor Password -kohtaan vaihtoehto [Disabled] ja paina Enter-näppäintä. Voilà!

Pakollinen lisenssisonta: Tämä blogikirjoitus on julkaistu public domainiin siinä määrin kuin mahdollista. Tämä blogikirjoitus on kirjoitettu siinä toivossa, että se on hyödyllinen jollekin; kuitenkin, tekijä ei ota minkäänlaista vastuuta mikäli päädyt rikkomaan kannettavan tietokoneesi tai aiheutat fyysistä vahinkoa itsellesi tai toiselle ihmiselle tai olennolle.
Jos kuitekin toteat tämän blogikirjoituksen hyödylliseksi, harkitsethan lahjoittamista Uncyclopedialle, sisältövapaalle tietosanakirjalle, koska paljon hyvää huumoria tarvittiin mahdollistaman tämä useiden epäonnistuneiden valvojan salasanan purkuyritysten aiheuttaman turhautumisen johdosta huolimatta.

Toimiko tämä tapa sinulla? Vai eikö sittenkään? Onko sinulla kysymyksiä tai ajatuksia tähän ThinkPad-malliin liittyen, Lenovon ThinkPadeihin liittyen vaiko toisen valmistajan valmistamaan kannettavaan tietokoneeseen liittyen? Katso, mitä englanninkielinen Laptops Wiki tietää ja jaa parhaat BIOS-salasanojen poisto-ohjeet ja -vinkit sekä yleiset tietosi kannettaviin tietokoneisiin liittyen yhteisön kanssa! :-)
Saatat myös haluta jättää kommentin alapuolella sijaitsevaan kommenttiosioon.

How to remove the BIOS Supervisor Password (SVP) on an IBM ThinkPad T23

Disclaimer: Do this only at your own risk! I am not responsible if you accidentally break your device or worse.
Always take the appropriate safety precautions when working with electrical device to prevent the risk of electrocution.

IBM stands for "International Business Machines" and that's a relatively accurate description of the ThinkPad laptop series originally produced by IBM for 13 years (from 1992 to 2005) and then acquired by the Chinese Lenovo. As IBM's ThinkPad laptops are more business-oriented than your average, run-of-the-mill laptops, they have pretty good security. Namely, a ThinkPad laptop can have up to three different passwords: power-on password (POP), supervisor password (SVP) and a hard disk drive (HDD) password. Whereas the hard disk drive password can be "bypassed" by swapping out the HDD to a different HDD, the other two are much, much more difficult to crack.

In February 2012, I didn't own a single ThinkPad (nowadays I own three, of which one is my main laptop that I use daily). I had heard many good things about ThinkPads and truly, the fact that they're "the only laptop[s] certified for use on the International Space Station" (according to the Wikipedia ThinkPad article) certainly is something. I managed to grab a used IBM ThinkPad T23 for less than 30€ (postal fees included) from a local auction site back in late February 2012. It was relatively fancy, especially given the low price and all; even the battery seemed to work for longer than 5 minutes! The only drawback was the presence of the dreaded supervisor password (SVP).

If you search around the Internet with your favorite search engine for instructions on how to remove the supervisor password on an IBM ThinkPad laptop, you'll most likely encounter one of these three things:

1. Hypocrites accusing you of being a thief and telling that asking for BIOS password removal instructions is illegal/against the site's rules/both
2. Idiots telling you that it's not possible
3. SoDoItYourself.com's overly complicated instructions involving soldering and other scary things

#1 and #2 are obviously bullshit and #3 is pretty complicated and risky if you're not an electrical engineer by training.

Thankfully, there is a simple way to remove the SVP of older ThinkPads. This method has been described by Le Chameau (which, by the way, is French for "the camel") on the comment section of that SoDoItYourself.com article. Likewise, there is an entire Blogspot blog dedicated to the same method. This method involves no soldering and the risk of bricking your ThinkPad is considerably smaller; the best part is that you don't need to buy anything!

Let's get started, shall we?

Step #1: Remove the battery and make sure that the AC adapter is not connected.

Step #2: Locate the ATMEL chip; on the ThinkPad T23, you'll need to remove the RAM cover and one RAM module to access that tiny (0,5mm x 0,3mm) chip.

Step #3: Short the two pins on the ATMEL chip, depending on your ThinkPad model, with a metal object (I used the "dull" end of a very small needle).
For the T23, you'll need to short pins 5 and 6, but for some other models using the smaller (the 8-legged) version, the pins you'll want to short out are pins 3 and 4! This is what got me; I desperately tried to short pins 3 and 4 on my T23, and that naturally did nothing. Take a look at this schematic for reference.
Also make sure that you're able to safely remove whatever metal object you're using to short out the two pins, as you'll need to do that with the laptop being powered on.

Step #4: Power on the laptop.

Step #5: Press whatever button you need to press to access BIOS; on T23, the correct button is the F1. There is usually a message like "Press <whatever key> to access Setup" on the IBM logo screen.

Step #6: You'll notice that loading the BIOS takes longer than usually; this is because you're shorting out the two pins. On the T23, an error message ("ERROR 0187: EAIA data access error") is displayed and after that, you need to press F1 once again to access BIOS for real.

Step #7: Now you're on BIOS, still shorting out the two pins. Go to the "Password" section and you'll notice that the supervisor password is [Disabled]. Don't be fooled! To get rid of the supervisor password that you don't know, you'll need to set a new one! Crazy but true.
Use the arrow keys to select the Supervisor Password, then press Enter. Now you're being prompted for a new supervisor password. Give it a password — I used "1" — and then press enter to select the "Re-enter password" field. Re-enter the new supervisor password and before pressing enter to actually save the new supervisor password, remove the metal object that is shorting the two pins on the ATMEL chip!
After you've done that, press Enter and the new supervisor password — the one that you now know — is saved. Then press F10 to save changes and reboot.

Step #8: Now you're done! If you're like me and you want to get rid of the supervisor password for good, boot up the laptop once again (normally, no need to short out anything anymore), press whatever key you need to (F1 on the T23) to enter BIOS, give it the supervisor password that you just set a moment ago, select the "Password" menu and set Supervisor Password to [Disabled] and press Enter. Voilà!

Mandatory licensing crap: This blog post is released to the public domain to the extent that it is possible. This blog post has been written in the hopes that it is useful to someone; however, the author accepts no responsibility whatsoever should you brick your laptop, cause physical injury to yourself or another person or being.
If you do, however, find this blog post useful, please consider donating to Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia, because a lot of good humor is what was needed to make this possible amidst all the frustration caused by numerous failed attempts at cracking the supervisor password.

Did this method work out for you? Did it not? Do you have questions or thoughts regarding this particular ThinkPad model, Lenovo-era ThinkPads or another laptop model by another manufacturer? Check out what the Laptops Wiki knows and share your best BIOS password removal tips and tricks with the community, as well as your laptop knowledge! :-)
You may also want to post a comment on the comment section below.

ArmchairGM is finally open source

Update on 28 August 2013: Wikia moved to GitHub from SVN in late 2012 and as of today, their SVN (at wikia-code.com) appears to be unreachable, so I've uploaded the full ArmchairGM source code to GitHub.
You can browse the source tree at https://github.com/mary-kate/ArmchairGM, but please make sure to read the README file before asking any questions about it.

August 1, 2011 was an important day in the history of open source software. That's when Wikia finally open-sourced the ArmchairGM codebase. You can browse the ArmchairGM codebase or even grab a copy of the ArmchairGM codebase, if you feel like it!

A bit of history

Over a year ago I tried open-sourcing the ArmchairGM codebase, but my idea was met with resistance and travelling to another country just to perform code cleanup — something you can do "online" by grabbing a copy of the codebase and then cleaning it up locally — was just not possible for me.

Later on, Sean Colombo, an awesome open source developer and the founder of LyricWiki, joined Wikia's technical team since LyricWiki moved to Wikia. On July 14th, I decided to e-mail Sean, just for the sake of it, to see if he'd be willing to help me out in making ArmchairGM's codebase open source.
You can believe that I was very surprised when I didn't receive the standard "sorry, can't do" reply that I've gotten used to getting from Wikia in response to my queries, but rather a sincere reply in which Sean stated that he'd be willing to help me out. Over the next two weeks, Sean worked hard to make sure that the ArmchairGM codebase would be ready to be released by removing private passwords and such things. And then, on August 1, it finally happened.
I was amazed that he took my original request — I had asked for a few ArmchairGM extensions and the skin — a couple steps further and open-sourced the entire codebase!

About the ArmchairGM codebase

The ArmchairGM codebase is based on MediaWiki 1.10alpha; the work on MediaWiki 1.10 started on 8 January 2007.
The current development version of MediaWiki is 1.19, the latest stable version is 1.17 and 1.18 will be released soon. So, as you can see, it's a bit old. After all, ArmchairGM was running on that 1.10alpha until early 2011, when it was upgraded to use the standard Wikia codebase.

Most of the interesting things can be found on the extensions and skins directories.

The extensions directory and its wikia subdirectory contain all the extensions used by ArmchairGM and/or created by Wikia developers — including ones that were short-lived, such as Challenge, or never enabled on ArmchairGM, such as LookupContribs.

The skins directory contains all the skins ever developed by the ArmchairGM staff, including the Sports skin used on ArmchairGM from 2007 to early 2011, its earlier incarnation, called simply ArmchairGM, the Halopedia skin and the Gamespot version of it, and plenty more. It should be noted that while this directory has plenty of PHP and CSS files (and even some JS files), most of the images used by custom skins are not there — some are accessible on Wikia's servers if you know where to look for them, some are permanently gone.

What about core hacks? Wikia has done and continues to do core hacks whenever they need to do something that MediaWiki doesn't support out-of-the-box. So far I've come across a few, relatively minor, yet unmarked core code hacks in the ArmchairGM codebase. I'm hoping that I'll have enough time later this year or the next year so that I can build a diff showing the differences between a standard MediaWiki 1.10alpha and the ArmchairGM version.
Needless to say that such a thing will be quite difficult to do, because "1.10alpha" can mean pretty much any version of MediaWiki between r18957 (committed on 8 January 2011) and r21732 (committed on 1 May 2007) — that's 2775 revisions of code, and the ArmchairGM codebase could've been forked from any of those revisions.
Update on 15 August 2011: I had totally forgotten about the existence of the RELEASE-NOTES file. Comparing the RELEASE-NOTES file of the ArmchairGM codebase to the RELEASE-NOTES of MediaWiki 1.10alpha at various points of development allowed me to track down the revision of MediaWiki that the ArmchairGM codebase is in. I believe that it's either r20138 or a revision very close to it.

To generate a patch file showing the differences between the standard MediaWiki codebase and the ArmchairGM codebase, first export a copy of MediaWiki at r20138:

svn export -r 20138 http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/phase3 MW-r20138

Then export a copy of the ArmchairGM codebase:

svn export https://svn.wikia-code.com/wikia/branches/wikia-ny/trunk NYC

And finally generate the patch:
diff -ur MW-r20138 NYC > diff-between-NYC-and-vanilla-MW-r20138.patch

Some changes are useless, like the change to includes/AjaxDispatcher.php, some are plain weird (like the various API changes to the files in the includes/api directory), and some changes (mostly the ones to OutputPage.php and SpecialPreferences.php) are a bit hard to read — but hey, there you have it, a file showing what changes were done to the core MediaWiki software by ArmchairGM's developers.
Most of the custom functionality that you once saw in ArmchairGM was done via extensions, thankfully, not via core changes; in addition to extensions, the skins also played a part — skins developed by ArmchairGM's developers usually implemented some custom handling for the main page of the wiki, for example, while a vanilla installation of MediaWiki with the default skin treats the wiki's main page the same way it would treat any other page.

For your viewing conveniece, here's a list of core MediaWiki files (81 in total) which differ between the ArmchairGM codebase and revision 20138 of MediaWiki:

extensions/README
includes/AjaxDispatcher.php
includes/AjaxFunctions.php
includes/api/ApiBase.php
includes/api/ApiFeedWatchlist.php
includes/api/ApiFormatBase.php
includes/api/ApiFormatJson.php
includes/api/ApiFormatPhp.php
includes/api/ApiFormatWddx.php
includes/api/ApiFormatXml.php
includes/api/ApiFormatYaml.php
includes/api/ApiHelp.php
includes/api/ApiLogin.php
includes/api/ApiMain.php
includes/api/ApiOpenSearch.php
includes/api/ApiPageSet.php
includes/api/ApiQueryAllpages.php
includes/api/ApiQueryBacklinks.php
includes/api/ApiQueryInfo.php
includes/api/ApiQueryLogEvents.php
includes/api/ApiQuery.php
includes/api/ApiQueryRecentChanges.php
includes/api/ApiQueryRevisions.php
includes/api/ApiQuerySiteinfo.php
includes/api/ApiQueryUserContributions.php
includes/api/ApiQueryWatchlist.php
includes/Article.php
includes/AutoLoader.php
includes/Database.php
includes/DefaultSettings.php
includes/DifferenceEngine.php
includes/EditPage.php
includes/Export.php
includes/GlobalFunctions.php
includes/Image.php
includes/LoadBalancer.php
includes/memcached-client.php
includes/MemcachedSessions.php
includes/MessageCache.php
includes/OutputPage.php
includes/ParserCache.php
includes/Parser.php
includes/QueryPage.php
includes/Sanitizer.php
includes/Skin.php
includes/SkinTemplate.php
includes/SpecialAllmessages.php
includes/SpecialConfirmemail.php
includes/SpecialContributions.php
includes/SpecialExport.php
includes/SpecialListusers.php
includes/SpecialLog.php
includes/SpecialMovepage.php
includes/SpecialNewpages.php
includes/SpecialPage.php
includes/SpecialPreferences.php
includes/SpecialRecentchanges.php
includes/SpecialSearch.php
includes/SpecialUndelete.php
includes/SpecialUpload.php
includes/SpecialUserlogin.php
includes/SpecialVersion.php
includes/SpecialWantedpages.php
includes/templates/Userlogin.php
includes/Title.php
includes/User.php
includes/WebStart.php
index.php
languages/messages/MessagesDe.php
languages/messages/MessagesEn.php
maintenance/deleteDefaultMessages.php
maintenance/dumpBackup.php
maintenance/generateSitemap.php
maintenance/postgres/tables.sql
maintenance/runJobs.php
skins/common/ajaxsearch.js
skins/common/common.css
skins/common/wikibits.js
skins/monobook/main.css
skins/monobook/rtl.css
skins/MonoBook.php

Ending Notes

Sure, the ArmchairGM codebase is old and plenty of stuff needs to be rewritten so that it even runs, let alone works properly, on modern versions of MediaWiki.
That being said, I'm glad that the ArmchairGM codebase is now open source — better late than never, as they say.

New editors

As you may or may not have noticed, I am a lazy blogger. And nobody likes to read a blog that hasn't been updated for ages.

This is exactly why I decided to add a couple editors to this blog (and in the process removed the "rants of a MediaWiki developer" subtitle, as this is no longer my personal blog) - StarNinja99 (a.k.a Nina) and supergeeky1 (a.k.a El Geeko).
Both are administrators on Darthipedia, the Star Wars Humor Wiki.

Welcome to the team, guys!