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Posts Tagged ‘BIOS’

fuk the kit you will love

January 19th, 2012 by

Dear fellows, in our moving free world, it’s not always bienvenue to talk about one of the *kit* software around.
Most of them have bad reputation, (with good or bad reasons) this is the debate of this post.

But in the uni-kit-verse there’s one you must known, especially if you are the proud owner of a laptop or one of this computer the manufacter deliver its firmware only in DOS exe format.
FirmwareUpdateKit (was introduced in 2008 in openSUSE by Steffen Winterfeldt

How that works?

As the title of the post give you the right command, open a console, then use the cnf (command-not-found) tool to learn what to do

Install the package

cnf fuk

The program 'fuk' can be found in the following package:
  * FirmwareUpdateKit [ path: /usr/bin/fuk, repository: zypp (repo-oss) ]

Try installing with:
    zypper install FirmwareUpdateKit

Pretty clear and cool, let’s install that stuff!

sudo zypper install FirmwareUpdateKit
root's password:
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Resolving package dependencies...

The following NEW packages are going to be installed:
  FirmwareUpdateKit syslinux 

2 new packages to install.
Overall download size: 758.0 KiB. After the operation, additional 2.1 MiB will be used.
Continue? [y/n/?] (y): y
Retrieving package syslinux-4.04-12.1.3.x86_64 (1/2), 642.0 KiB (1.9 MiB unpacked)
Retrieving: syslinux-4.04-12.1.3.x86_64.rpm [done]
Retrieving package FirmwareUpdateKit-1.1-14.1.1.x86_64 (2/2), 116.0 KiB (178.0 KiB unpacked)
Retrieving: FirmwareUpdateKit-1.1-14.1.1.x86_64.rpm [done]
Installing: syslinux-4.04-12.1.3 [done]
Installing: FirmwareUpdateKit-1.1-14.1.1 [done]

Firmware Update

Get your bios

Nothing easy for that, you will have to surf on boring mfg website, and find an appropriate bios for your computer.

Be serious during that selection, you can screw up totally your computer

Time to fuk

As always before running a program, it’s always good to check if there’s the fine manual (not the case here) or try a -h –help

fuk --help
Usage: fuk [OPTIONS] FILES
FirmwareUpdateKit version 1.1.

Create bootable DOS system and add FILES to it.
The main purpose is to assist with DOS-based firmware updates.

Options:
  --grub                        Add boot entry to /boot/grub/menu.lst.
  --lilo                        Add boot entry to /etc/lilo.conf.
  --title TITLE                 Use TITLE as label for boot menu entry.
  --iso FILE                    Create bootable CD.
  --floppy FILE                 Create bootable (1440 kB) floppy disk.
  --image FILE                  Create bootable harddisk.
  --run COMMAND                 Run COMMAND after booting DOS.
  --verbose                     Be more verbose.

Nothing complicated as a nuclear plan here, everything seems to be self explicit.
Let try it, and install a new grub entry for the new A8 version for my lappy. 

fuk --verbose --grub --run M4600A08.exe /home/bruno/src_tmp/HARDWARE/DELL_M4600/M4600A08.exe 
/tmp/fuk.lSVIgS0cMt/fwupdate.img: chs = 186/4/16, size = 11904 blocks
- writing mbr
- writing fat12 boot block
- copying:
    /usr/share/FirmwareUpdateKit/kernel.sys
    /usr/share/FirmwareUpdateKit/command.com
    /tmp/fuk.lSVIgS0cMt/config.sys
    /tmp/fuk.lSVIgS0cMt/autoexec.bat
    /home/bruno/src_tmp/HARDWARE/DELL_M4600/M4600_A08.exe
c-3po:~ #

That’s all I’ve now a new entry in my grub list

title Firmware Update
    kernel /boot/memdisk
    initrd /boot/fwupdate.img

Apply

Now just reboot and use the grub entry, then upgrade your bios, like you will normally have done with you old complicated build iso, or diskette (I’m joking)

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Architectures, Base System, Systems Management | 5 Comments »

Flashrom Utility for LINUX (part1)

January 21st, 2009 by

This blog entry is a little bit OffTopic. I’m writing not about an openSUSE Theme, but about
Linux. Last week i’ve chatted with the guys in #coreboot @ freenode and it was very
interesting. This article based on an collaborative PR Project from Carl-Daniel Hailfinger. This first Part of the Article presents Flashrom. The next Article presents Coreboot. The web site of that project is:

http://www.coreboot.org/

The flash utility is known as “Flashrom”.

Flashrom is a universal flash programming utility used to detect, read, erase, or write BIOS
chips (parallel, LPC, FWH and SPI technologies) in various packages (DIP, PLCC, SOIC).
It can be used to flash firmware images such as traditional BIOS or coreboot or to back up
the existing firmware.

Everybody who does not want to boot DOS or Windows just to perform a BIOS update can use
flashrom. It does not require a graphics card, monitor or keyboard and can even be used
over SSH on a remote machine. You do not have to reboot to run flashrom, but it is recommended
to reboot after a successful update. Many people are using flashrom as a replacement for
the various AMI/Award/Phoenix BIOS flashing tools out there.

Flashrom supports over 100 flash chips and it is really easy to add support for a new chip
if your board happens to have an unsupported chip.

Flashrom has its own home page: http://www.coreboot.org/Flashrom

It is free software released under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2.

Flashrom is a “normal” user space application, but it requires superuser privileges.
Some hardened kernels (which deny access to physical memory) do not support flashrom, but
most distributions out there work fine.

Of course, the usual requirements for BIOS updates apply here as well. You should have a
stable power supply. Switching the machine off during flashing will make your machine
unbootable. Since flashrom treats BIOS files as opaque blobs, you usually do not get any
of the failover/dual BIOS features advertised on some boards.

Backup the current BIOS image into a file:

$ flashrom -r backup.bin

For other usage instructions, please refer to the flashrom home page or the man page.

In case something goes wrong, do NOT reboot, but join #coreboot @freenode and tell the
flashrom developers about it. As long as the machine is still running, there is a good
chance that everything can be fixed.

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Posted in Documentation | 2 Comments »