Thursday, October 24, 2013

Lenovo BIOS Update method for Linux and USB thumb drive

If your like me and you don't ever like the methods that are laid out by
the manufacturer to burn an ISO to CD or use a Windows Update utility
then follow these instructions.

Linux Instructions.

1. Get the bios update ISO from the lenovo support site.
I have a ThinkPad W530 (2447-23U)

You will want to grab your Machine Type (mine was 2447)
You will also want to grab your Model (mine was 23U)

In order to grab this information you can use dmidecode or hwinfo.

Here is a link to the ISO file I downloaded for my Machine type and
model.
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?DocID=DS029170#os

(g5uj17us.iso)

Once you have the right ISO file then move to step 2.

2. Get 'geteltorito' and extract the boot image from the iso. Execute
the below commands.
$ wget
'http://userpages.uni-koblenz.de/~krienke/ftp/noarch/geteltorito/geteltorito.pl'
$ perl geteltorito.pl g5uj17us.iso > biosupdate.img
Note: if your wondering where to get the geteltorito perl script and the link above is not working for you then you can visit the developers website at http://freecode.com/projects/geteltorito 

3. Copy the image to the USB thumdrive once your thumb drive is connected.

$ sudo dd if=biosupdate.img of=/dev/usbthumdrive bs=512K

Reboot, Press F12 and boot from USB

Execute the Flash Utility

Have a lot of fun!