Lenovo To Support Configuring ThinkPad BIOS From Within Linux

In conjunction with supported Lenovo systems, a new "Think-LMI" driver is on its way to the mainline Linux kernel for allowing some BIOS/firmware settings to be accessed and configured within Linux.

The Think-LMI driver allows for changing BIOS settings on supported ThinkPads and other unspecified Lenovo systems where the WMI interface is supported.

The supported BIOS options for reading/configuring are exposed to user-space via sysfs with the firmware-attributes class. Within /sys/class/firmware-attributes/* are various options showing the name, value, and type whether it's an enumeration/integer/string.

Lenovo exposing BIOS configuration tunables via the firmware-attributes sysfs class isn't an entirely new concept... Dell spearheaded the firmware-attributes work for Linux. Since last year the Dell WMI Systems Management driver has allowed exposing the BIOS configuration bits with supported systems.

The Think-LMI driver has been queued up within the platform-x86-drivers review queue, which will likely end up going through the "next" branch soon most likely in time for the Linux 5.14 kernel merge window that's coming up in a few weeks.