When booting or restarting a ThinkPad running 16.04 with 4.4.0-23-generic. I see a brief error or warning that states
TPM error (6)
Looking at the system, I see a bit of chatter in dmesg
$ dmesg | grep -i tpm
[ ] tpm_tis 00:05: 1.2 TPM (device-id 0x0, rev-id 78)
[ ] tpm_tis 00:05: TPM is disabled/deactivated (0x6)
[ ] tpm_tis 00:05: A TPM error (6) occurred attempting to read a pcr value
[ ] ima: No TPM chip found, activating TPM-bypass!
Should I change bios settings or deal with this in another way? It doesn't seem to hinder performance once a desktop manager is loaded.
Best Answer
On Thinkpad T540p, there is a field Security Chip in BIOS under the Security tab with options Active, Inactive and Disabled.
The error message you reported appears if this option is set to Inactive: "Security chip is visible, but is not functional."
In my case, any other option removes the error. Active means "Security chip is functional" and Disabled "Security chip is hidden and is not functional."