HOWTO: Flash BIOS, The Ubuntu Way

Hello ,

I've a Asus P5GC-MX/1333.I wanted to backup current bios image as *.rom file booting with memdisk and floppy.img(grub2) .
Booted Successfully and I invoked the command(afudos) to make a backup of current BIOS.rom .

"DIR" Command shows the backed up bios image is there.but ,once I exit the freedos environment ,I lose it(understandably).
Is there a way that I can backup the old bios.rom to Hard disk ?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by deepclutch

Hello ,

I've a Asus P5GC-MX/1333.I wanted to backup current bios image as *.rom file booting with memdisk and floppy.img(grub2) .
Booted Successfully and I invoked the command(afudos) to make a backup of current BIOS.rom .

"DIR" Command shows the backed up bios image is there.but ,once I exit the freedos environment ,I lose it(understandably).
Is there a way that I can backup the old bios.rom to Hard disk ?

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This link provided me with two places to look on the ASUS site for information and downloads. It would seem there is a native Linux updater you can use, allowing you to effectively bypass all methods I list on the first page of this thread. If you use the native Linux utility, I would then assume you should be able to save the backup locally to your hard disk (and then onto a floppy, a USB flash drive, a CD, or some other medium). If that fails for some reason, you can try using the flashrom utility I mention on the first page. I believe there is functionality built into the flashrom utility to allow you to make a backup of your BIOS.

@ciscosurfer:I already saw that.For Linux downloads ,they provide the same dos utility "afudos".
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If I press ctrl+alt+delete ,the system restarts;but does not save the oldbios.rom into the floppy.I think "backup" is the dos command to be used to copy into floppy image which is unfortunately not present in the FDOEM or FDSTD file. :(
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I've another doubt:
My BIOS Version is 0312 -oldest version.and the latest is 0413 .Do I need to upgrade to successive versions or Can I directly upgrade to the latest?

Thanks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by deepclutch

@ciscosurfer:I already saw that.For Linux downloads ,they provide the same dos utility "afudos".
--
If I press ctrl+alt+delete ,the system restarts;but does not save the oldbios.rom into the floppy.I think "backup" is the dos command to be used to copy into floppy image which is unfortunately not present in the FDOEM or FDSTD file. :(
--
I've another doubt:
My BIOS Version is 0312 -oldest version.and the latest is 0413 .Do I need to upgrade to successive versions or Can I directly upgrade to the latest?

Thanks.

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Are you reading the manual that came with the motherboard or that you can download from the ASUS site? The manual -- starting in section 2.1 -- describes multiple methods of going about the process of backing up the current BIOS. One method describes backing up to a floppy using the following systax [section 2.1.3 in the manual] The floppy should not be write-protected and at least 1024K should be free to make a copy

Code:

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afudos /o[filename]

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You need to read this information in the manual; there is more there that you need to read. There is information there also about CrashFree BIOS 2, a recovery BIOS. I recommend you read that.

There is no need to incrementally update your BIOS through multiple versions; the latest should be fine.

yup,I've already done that.afudos /oOLDBIOS1.rom is the command that I ran it backed up the BIOS(Atleast to the RAM).But ,what happens is ,the freedos floppy image I boot into ,cannot save the backed up BIOS.rom.it is lost immediately after I restart.
"dir" command shows:
OLDBIOS1.rom
^^^but ,what I meant is ,it is cached in the memory of the system.the fdos image ,is read only ,I presume;since ,It cannot save the changes.
will update later.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by deepclutch

yup,I've already done that.afudos /oOLDBIOS1.rom is the command that I ran it backed up the BIOS(Atleast to the RAM).But ,what happens is ,the freedos floppy image I boot into ,cannot save the backed up BIOS.rom.it is lost immediately after I restart.
"dir" command shows:
OLDBIOS1.rom
^^^but ,what I meant is ,it is cached in the memory of the system.the fdos image ,is read only ,I presume;since ,It cannot save the changes.
will update later.

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Maybe try the floppy method if you want to write a backup file to disk. You could also try Herman's method; don't know if you'll be sandboxed in /boot or otherwise unable to access any other directory. It's worth a shot, though.

Herman's post http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...&postcount=120

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Herman

:) Hello there, ciscosurfer,
I'm sorry but I wasn't able to find out how to boot the biosupdate.img from the page you linked to there. Maybe I didn't read enough.

After some googling and a few experiments, I think I have found out the very easiest way to do it with GRUB2.
Since we're probably only planning on doing this once, rather that taking the time to make a permanent menu entry, it's easiest to press the 'c' key from the GRUB2 menu for GRUB's Command Line Interface and boot with live commands.

The commands I used were:

Code:

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linux16 (hd0,1)/boot/memdisk
initrd16 (hd0,1)/boot/biosupdate.img
boot

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... and thank you for your excellent how-to!
Regards, Herman ):P

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Excellent method! Thanks for posting your experience!

I used the same lines Herman's post mentioned to boot DOS.It is Mentioned Here:
http://syslinux.zytor.com/wiki/index..._is_MEMDISK.3F
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Anyways ,I successfully Flashed BIOS to the latest Version the best and easy way- using flashrom Utility(Linux native).
Motherboard is a ASUS P5GC-MX/1333(Intel 945GC chipset) with very old BIOS version(0312) flashed to the latest version(0413).
Chipset - Winbond 25x40

flashrom-0.9.2-r1043 version is used(Debian binary built from source).
Great tool!
I had already set up freedos image with afudos tool booted using syslinux memdisk via grub2.Compared to that ,this tool serves great. :D
http://www.flashrom.org

Thanks!

@deepclutch,

Glad to hear flashrom worked for you!

I'm trying to use your CD method, but when I try to copy the new rom image and the exe file to install it,
wayward4now@iam:~/Downloads/tmp$ sudo cp k8u939.f5 /tmp/cdr
cp: writing `/tmp/cdr/k8u939.f5': No space left on device

I can't imagine not having enough space? Please help. Ric