Flashing BIOS from Linux
This article aims on providing information on flashing your system BIOS under Linux. Most manufacturers provide a Windows executable or a BIOS executable that can only be run under Windows. However, there are a few utilities, that allow you to upgrade your system BIOS under Linux.
- HP users may download Windows BIOS updater from HP website, extract *.exe file and locate ISO image for burning to a CD. Using CD, upgrade is possible from BIOS menu using 'Firmware Upgrade' without using below tools. See this thread for details.
- For users with Dell computers, Dell recommends Linux users flash their BIOS following information located here (in short, put the .EXE on a USB stick and use the F12 boot menu to access the firmware's flash utility).
fwupd
fwupd is a simple daemon to allow session software to update device firmware on your local machine.
Large vendors including Dell and Logitech use this way to distribute firmware updates to Linux.
fwupd only supports flashing BIOS updates in UEFI mode.
See fwupd for further information about installation and usage.
BiosDisk
BiosDisk simplifies the process of flashing your system BIOS under Linux.
Installation
Install the biosdisk-gitAUR package.
Usage
To use the biosdisk utility to create a BIOS flash image, first download the latest raw BIOS image for your system from your manufacturer's website. Make sure however, that you always get the BIOS executable and NOT the Windows executable. You then have one of two options: create a ISO or install the image for your bootloader.
- The mkimage action will create a ISO image on the user's hard drive. Usage is the following:
# biosdisk mkimage [-o option] [-i destination] /path/to/.exe
- The install action will create the biosdisk image, copy the image file to /boot, and then update the bootloader with an entry for the image. Then all the user has to do is boot the system and select the image to flash the BIOS; this will load the biosdisk image directly from the hard drive and flash the BIOS.
# biosdisk install [-o option] [--name=] /path/to/.exe
Flashrom
Flashrom is a utility for identifying, reading, writing, verifying and erasing flash chips. It is designed to flash BIOS/EFI/coreboot/firmware/optionROM images on mainboards, network/graphics/storage controller cards, and various programmer devices.
Installation
Install the flashrom or flashrom-gitAUR package.
Usage
Find out if your motherboard and chipset (internal) is supported by flashrom at this website. Supported Hardware You can also find out if your hardware is supported by issuing the following command
# flashrom --programmer internal
The above command will tell you your motherboard and chipset. You can then find out if yours is supported by issuing this command:
# flashrom --programmer internal -L | grep CHIPNAMEfrompreviouscommand
On modern mainboards you probably get more than one rom chip listed. You have to select the chipname you get from the upper command. Then you use the -c
option to select which rom is affected by the command
# flashrom --programmer internal -c "CHIPNAME" -r backup_CHIPNAME.bin
Write and verify the new BIOS image (proprietary or Coreboot) on the ROM chip:
# flashrom --programmer internal internal -c "CHIPNAME" -w newbios.bin
If you want to flash other flash chips on your mainboard, you will find all options with
# flashrom
CONFIG_IO_STRICT_DEVMEM
a new kernel security measure can make flashrom stop working, in that case you can try adding iomem=relaxed
to your kernel parameters. FAQ.FreeDOS
FreeDOS a free DOS-compatible operating system, is up to the challenge, no need for proprietary DOS versions. So, all you need is a bootable floppy disk image with FreeDOS kernel on it.
Unetbootin
By far the easiest way to make a bootable FreeDOS USB Stick is using unetbootinAUR.
You should format a pendrive with FAT16 and flag it as "boot" (you may do this through a GUI with gparted or partitionmanager). Then, after mounting the flash drive, select under distribution FreeDOS and your mounted stick. The app will automatically download the image for you and copy it to the drive. Finally, you may copy everything you want to flash there (BIOS, firmwares, etc).
Gentoo
Check out FreeDOS Flash Drive on the Gentoo Wiki if you want to create a bootable FreeDOS Flash drive.
Pre-built images
Yet another simple solution: FreeDOS pre-built bootable USB flash drive image by Christian Taube. Instructions can be found here.
Using a FreeDOS-provided Disk Image + USB stick
As of writing (2017-07-11), unetbootinAUR doesn't support versions of FreeDOS more recent than 1.0 (current version is 1.2). The following procedure worked to upgrade an Inspiron 17-3737 to the A09 BIOS. (Dell offers this as a possibility on their site)
Some notes before starting:
- You can check your current BIOS version with dmidecode. You might already be at the latest version.
- Ensure that your hardware vendor has verified this method works (use of FreeDOS to run BIOS update
.exe
) - Laptop users should not attempt this without AC power
- This is dangerous, and you assume all risk for following this procedure.
Procedure:
- Grab the latest USB installer from the FreeDOS Download Page
- author note: used the "Full" version on suspicion that it might include more drivers, etc (pure speculation)
- Extract the archive, you get a .img file
- Determine which of
/dev/sdX
is your USB stick (usefdisk -l
) - Write the image directly to the block device:
-
dd if=FD12FULL.img of=/dev/sdX status=progress
(whereX
is the letter representing your USB stick as a block device, don't write the image to a partition)
-
- Double-check that the image copying worked:
-
fdisk -l
(you should see a single partition on a DOS disk with the bootable ("boot") flag set)
-
- Mount the partition, and copy over the .exe used to update your firmware
- Stay on the safe side and limit the filename to 8 characters (without extension), upper case
- Ensure that you verified any checksums provided by your hardware vendor
- Unmount and reboot. Do whatever is needed to boot from the USB drive
Now you will find yourself in the FreeDOS live installation environment.
- Select your language
- You will be prompted to install FreeDOS
- Select "No - Return to DOS"
- You should see a prompt (
C:\>
) - Run
dir /w
and verify that your firmware upgrade tool is present - Run the executable
- author note: in the case of the Dell tool, the machine displayed a spash screen and then rebooted. Upon reboot, it started the firmware upgrade automatically, and ran for about 2 minutes with the fan at full speed)
- Once the process specific to your vendor completes, optionally verify through the BIOS setup screen, as well as by running dmidecode when you're back in linux
Images that are too large for a floppy
If your flash image is too large for a floppy, go to the FreeDos bootdisk website, and download the 10Mb hard-disk image. This image is a full disk image, including partitions, so adding your flash utility will be a little trickier:
First find the first partition (at time of writing, the first partition starts at block 63; this means that the partitions starts at offset 512 * 63 = 32256
).
You can either use:
# file -sk <image-file> | sed -r 's/.*startsector ([0-9]+).*/\1/'
63
Or:
# fdisk -l <image-file>
… Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes … Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System * 63 19151 9544+ 1 FAT12
Now you can mount the image:
# mount -oloop,offset=$((63 * 512)) <image-file> /mnt
Then you can copy your flash utility onto the filesystem as normal. Once you're done:
# umount /mnt
The image can now be copied to a USB stick for booting, or booted as a memdisk as per normal instructions.
Usage
The OEM Bootdisk version is recommended, as it only includes kernel
and command.com
thus leaving more space for the flash utility and new BIOS image. Download the FreeDOS image and decompress it.
Copy your BIOS flash utility and new BIOS image to the mounted floppy disk image. Load the necessary modules:
# modprobe vfat # modprobe loop
/proc/fileystems
shows if the needed file systems are supported. "loop mount" the floppy disk image to a temporary path:
$ mkdir /tmp/floppy $ mount -t vfat -o loop FDOEM.144 /tmp/floppy
If the mount went without errors, copy the BIOS flash utility and new BIOS image to the mounted floppy disk image. You will probably have to unzip the archive you downloaded from your motherboard vendor site, to get to those two files. For example:
# unzip 775Dual-VSTA\(2.60\).zip
Archive: 775Dual-VSTA(2.60).zip inflating: 75DVSTA2.60 inflating: ASRflash.exe
# cp 75DVSTA2.60 ASRflash.exe /tmp/floppy
Check that the two files were not too big for the floppy:
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /tmp/FDOEM.144 1424 990 434 70% /tmp/floppy
Unmount the floppy disk image:
# umount /tmp/floppy
The next step is to burn the floppy image to a CD/DVD-RW media, but in a way that it can be booted afterwards. First create a bootable CD image, and then burn it.
# genisoimage -o bootcd.iso -b FDOEM.144 FDOEM.144 # wodim -v bootcd.iso
You may alternatively add your image to the GRUB menu. Install syslinux and copy memdisk
and your image to /boot
:
# cp /usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk /boot # cp FDOEM.144 /boot/flashbios.img
Now add an entry to /boot/grub/menu.lst
:
/boot/grub/menu.lst
title Flash BIOS kernel /memdisk initrd /flashbios.img
Or for GRUB2 in /boot/grub/grub.cfg
:
/boot/grub/grub.cfg
menuentry "Flash BIOS" { linux16 /boot/memdisk initrd16 /boot/flashbios.img }
Or for syslinux in /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg
:
/boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg
LABEL flashbios MENU LABEL Flash BIOS LINUX ../memdisk INITRD ../fdboot.img
Finally reboot your machine, making sure the CD drive is first in the boot sequence, and run the BIOS upgrade procedure when the CD boots. If using the GRUB method, choose the new entry on the list, and it should boot into FreeDOS.
Bootable optical disk emulation
The script Geteltorito.pl will extract the El Torito boot image. It has worked on Lenovo laptops like X220, X230, X260, W540, T450 and T450s. It may work for other vendors as well.
Installation
Install the geteltoritoAUR package.
Usage
Get the bios update iso from the vendor support site. Run the geteltorito image extraction:
$ geteltorito.pl -o <image>.img <image>.iso
Copy the image to the usb thumbdrive:
# dd if=<image>.img of=<destination> bs=512K
Reboot and boot from the USB drive, follow vendor directions.