Friday, August 20, 2010

The easiest way to update a Dell Bios within Ubuntu

Here's how to install that dumb .exe file Dell ships for new Bios's in Ubuntu (or any Debian Linux).  These directions should easily be altered for any Linux by changing the first apt-get command as long as libsmbios-bin and wine are available for that platform.
  1. sudo apt-get install libsmbios-bin wine
  2. getSystemId will give you everything you need to know about your machine and current BIOS.
  3. Download the most recent BIOS upgrade for your system from http://support.dell.com as you would if using Windows
  4. wine O755-A17.exe -writehdrfile will extract the .hdr file containing the Bios upgrade program.
  5. sudo modprobe dell_rbu  will load the dell_rbu driver
  6. dellBiosUpdate –u –f hdrFileName.hdr --reboot will begin the upgrade process and reboot the machine to finish.
Source
Posted by David Ron at 12:23 PM

2 comments:

  1. Hi,
    I'm getting the following error when running the install command from Live CD
    E: Unable to locate package libsmbios-bin
    E: Unable to locate package wine

    Any ideas?
    ReplyDelete
  2. Kinan, The live CD ships with a limited subset of the full Ubuntu installation. You will have to allow Ubuntu to additional software over the network. Don't worry, when you reboot, nothing you install will remain. Here's a nice tutorial about how to use the Ubuntu Software Tab to add additional software Repositories:
    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/Ubuntu
    ReplyDelete

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