BIOS update without optical disk

2009-04-27T00:03:02Z

Igor47: added x200s to list of working machines

For recent models, such as Thinkpad {{X200}}, Lenovo provides both win32 ''"BIOS update utility"'' and iso-image of ''"BIOS Update (Bootable CD)"''. If you don't have Windows installed, the first option is obviously unavailable for you. If you have an optical drive of some kind (internal, or built into the docking station, or an external USB drive) you can burn the iso-image and proceed with the BIOS update. In case if you don't have any optical drive things get a little tricky.

A quick look at the ''BIOS Update (Bootable CD)'' iso-image shows that its <tt>iso9660</tt> filesystem is empty and its bootimage is of <tt>BootMediaType=4</tt>, i.e. it is a [http://www.phoenix.com/NR/rdonlyres/98D3219C-9CC9-4DF5-B496-A286D893E36A/0/specscdrom.pdf harddisk emulation]. Therefore non of the methods discussed in [[BIOS_Upgrade/X_Series]] would work. There are many Linux tools which extract bootimages from iso-images, but after a search over the net, I didn't any which works correctly with <tt>BootMediaType=4</tt> (e.g. <tt>geteltorito</tt> form '''genisoimage''' package messes things up). I found, however, a free open-source DOS utility '''isobar''' from [http://shsucdx.adoxa.cjb.net/ shsucd] package. So, I just [http://colimit.googlepages.com/isobar.c ported] it to linux.

Now, to update the BIOS,

* make sure that you have '''syslinux''' installed (we will need <tt>memdisk</tt> from this package)

apt-get install syslinux

* compile the [http://colimit.googlepages.com/isobar.c isobar] utility

gcc isobar.c -o isobar

* extract the bootimage from the ''BIOS Update (Bootable CD)'' iso-image and copy it to the boot partition

./isobar 6duj08uc.iso -o bios.img
cp bios.img /boot/bios.img

* copy <tt>memdisk</tt> loader to the boot partition

cp /usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk /boot/memdisk

* append the following lines to /boot/grub/menu.lst

title BIOS update
root (hd0,0)
kernel /memdisk
initrd /bios.img

* reboot, and in the grub menu choose the <tt>BIOS update</tt> option

==Hard drive firmware update utility==

Besides BIOS updates, Lenovo also provides [[Hard drive firmware update]] utility in the form of a bootable iso-image. Quick check shows that in some cases it has the same structure as above, i.e. empty <tt>iso9660</tt> filesystem and bootimage of <tt>BootMediaType=4</tt>. So, naturally, one would think that we can boot it in the same way as above, via <tt>grub</tt> & <tt>memdisk</tt>. However, common sense tells that it is not a good idea to read the firmware from the same very harddrive whose firmware we are updating. But looking further into the structure of the bootimage we see that first it creates a <tt>RAMDRIVE</tt>, copies the update utility there, and launches it from the <tt>RAMDRIVE</tt>. So, it is actually OK to use <tt>grub</tt>. Tested on my {{X200}}.

==Works with==
{{T500}}, {{R500}}, {{X200}}, {{X200_Tablet}}, {{X301}}, {{W500}}, {{W700}}, {{x200s}}, [[Hard drive firmware update]]

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BIOS update without optical disk