HOWTO: Flash BIOS, The Ubuntu Way

[ciscosurfer]

@bja888,

Very happy to hear you found this thread and that it was able to help you get your board working again.

[ender353]

yo thanks. nice how to. how can you do this using a live cd?

[ciscosurfer]

yo thanks. nice how to. how can you do this using a live cd?

Not sure. Might be tricky. Theoretically I suppose you could roll your own distro and add the flashing files to it and force it to load on boot, thereby allowing a BIOS flash before entering a live environment. Other than that, not sure. Alternatives to this HOWTO are to use a USB flash drive, a burned CD w/BIOS files, or a floppy.

EDIT: I assume you mean using a live Ubuntu CD, for example?

[rexmo]

Can you give any suggestion as to why I run out of space on the device???

johnny@heythere-desktop:~$ cd Desktop
johnny@heythere-desktop:~/Desktop$ cd jaystonish
johnny@heythere-desktop:~/Desktop/jaystonish$ sudo gunzip FDOEM.144.gz
[sudo] password for johnny:
johnny@heythere-desktop:~/Desktop/jaystonish$ dir
AFUDOS.exe FDOEM.144 S8VM1023.ROM
johnny@heythere-desktop:~/Desktop/jaystonish$ mkdir /mnt/temp
mkdir: cannot create directory `/mnt/temp': File exists
johnny@heythere-desktop:~/Desktop/jaystonish$ sudo modprobe loop
johnny@heythere-desktop:~/Desktop/jaystonish$ sudo mount -o loop -t vfat FDOEM.144 /mnt/temp
johnny@heythere-desktop:~/Desktop/jaystonish$ sudo cp ~/Desktop/jaystonish/* /mnt/temp
cp: writing `/mnt/temp/FDOEM.144': No space left on device
cp: writing `/mnt/temp/S8VM1023.ROM': No space left on device
johnny@heythere-desktop:~/Desktop/jaystonish$

Thanks in advance!

[ciscosurfer]

rexmo,

You shouldn't need to use sudo when gunzipping the FDOEM.144 image, you should however use sudo or get root when creating the temp directory under /mnt

Is /mnt its own partition? Does it have enough available space? You can run a df -h to what's going on. Does /mnt/temp even exist? Change directories or take a file listing to see. How big is the image you are trying to copy over including your new flash rom? Which method (floppy, CD, other) are you attempting to copy to?

What I think is occuring is that the file AFUDOS.exe is too large and will not fit nicely into the 1.44 MB FreeDOS image we are using. There are alternative methods in this thread (links in the main post as well as comments throughout the thread) that can help you to flash using other means (there are even 2.88 MB images available if you need just a little more room).

Lastly, have you checked to see if your board can be flashed using a native Linux utility? If so, I would suggest going that route b/c it might be easier.

[rexmo]

Ok, I think the AFUDOS.EXE is well over 1.2 MB and that doesn't leave enough room for the .ROM BIOS file.

I am using this process to create a bootable CD so using any image up to about 740 MB should be fine.

I currently cannot update the bios of my friends computer without creating a bootable CD because is does not have an OS yet and I need the update to install UBUNTU.

Is the 2.88 or even larger image file availabe through the FreeDOS link?
Could you send me the links?

Thanks very much!!!

[ciscosurfer]

A link to these images was posted in the Howto found on the first page, but here it is again for your convenience: http://www.fdos.org/bootdisks/

You should be able to find what you are looking for on that page.

Good luck!

[reanbootsma]

Great How-to

BUT it failed to work on Acer TravelMate 6592 with the following message:
(freeDOS) "InitDiskBad or missing Command Interpreter"

It is because the current BIOS on the laptop does not support a floppy drive (A...

Maybe ciscosurfer can add that as a note to save someone else some time - please.

It works on a desktop though.

rean

[oo-boon-too]

Very informative, very nice indeed!
Definitely going to remember this thread for the future.

[nyarnon]

Hi Guys,

Read this HOWTO and wonder what's it all about? Why wouldn't you just use FLASHROM http://www.coreboot.org/Flashrom

install with

> sudo apt-get install flashrom.

Backup your existing bios with

> sudo flashrom -r original.rom

Write the new one with

> sudo flashrom -w new.rom

reboot and be happy.