# [SOLVED]Easy BIOS updates in Linux - which brand?

## meulie

Hi all!

Which brand/manufacturer offers the easiest way to upgrade a BIOS on a machine that will have no FDD/CDROM drives? Preferred would be some kinda of Linux utility, but I guess booting from USB would be acceptable as well, as last resort...

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## P.Kosunen

Asus EZ FLash 2 feature can update BIOS from USB-stick, just hit Alt-F2 after power button..

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## Monkeh

Just about anything capable of booting from USB can be flashed via USB.  I don't think there are many (any consumer at all?) boards you can flash from within Linux.

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## meulie

 *P.Kosunen wrote:*   

> Asus EZ FLash 2 feature can update BIOS from USB-stick, just hit Alt-F2 after power button..

 

And then all I need on the USB is the new bios? Sounds good!  :Smile: 

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## meulie

 *Monkeh wrote:*   

> Just about anything capable of booting from USB can be flashed via USB.  I don't think there are many (any consumer at all?) boards you can flash from within Linux.

 

I think some of the Dell's have this option, but I'd rather build my own...    :Cool: 

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## Monkeh

 *meulie wrote:*   

>  *Monkeh wrote:*   Just about anything capable of booting from USB can be flashed via USB.  I don't think there are many (any consumer at all?) boards you can flash from within Linux. 
> 
> I think some of the Dell's have this option, but I'd rather build my own...   

 

Well all you need to flash any modern board is a USB stick, a bootable DOS on it (a win98 image is fine), and the files provided with the BIOS.

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## steveb

All you need is just ... well... Linux. No Floppy, no CD-ROM, no USB, just pure simple Gentoo with a boot loader. For example Grub. Then you use memdisk from SysLinux and add one simple entry in your Grub boot loader to load the memdisk as Kernel and your DOS based boot disk (for example FreeDOS) as initrd. On the boot disk image you have then your flashing utilities and the BIOS image. The net is full of boot disks and you can extract/modify all of them on a normal Gentoo Linux.

For a friend I added this to his Grub:

```
title=Shuttle AK32A BIOS Upgrade

        root (hd0,0)

        kernel /boot/syslinux/memdisk

        initrd /boot/syslinux/drdflash.img
```

The directory /boot/syslinux has the following content:

```
/boot/syslinux/memdisk

/boot/syslinux/drdflash.img
```

drdflash.img is just a normal DOS image:

```
# file /boot/syslinux/drdflash.img

/boot/syslinux/drdflash.img: DOS floppy 1440k, x86 hard disk boot sector

#
```

Changing the content of the image is as simple as mounting it as vfat:

```
# mount -t vfat -o loop /boot/syslinux/drdflash.img /mnt/temp01/

# ls -lah /mnt/temp01/

total 430K

drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 7.0K Jan  1  1970 .

drwxr-xr-x 15 root root 4.0K Nov  9  2007 ..

-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 256K Feb 13  2006 ak32s30a.bin

-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root  39K Jan  2  2003 awd822a.exe

-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root  66K Jan  7  1999 command.com

-r-xr-xr-x  1 root root  25K Jan  7  1999 ibmbio.com

-r-xr-xr-x  1 root root  31K Jan  7  1999 ibmdos.com

#
```

You are not dependent on any USB boot functionality or Floppy or you name it. It just works with every brand/manufacturer and takes an very small amount of space on your disk.

// SteveB

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## meulie

Cool! I'll give that a try in the coming weekend on my current system, but I can't think of a reason why it wouldn't work. Thanks for sharing this with us!  :Smile: 

(Perhaps an idea to add it as an entry to the Gentoo Wiki?)

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## P.Kosunen

 *steveb wrote:*   

> DOS based boot disk (for example FreeDOS) as initrd.

 

Here is minimal FreeDOS 1.0 bootdisk image with optional (boot menu) himem driver.

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