[CLUE-Tech] flashing BIOS from within Linux?

[Keith Hellman]

On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 11:52:20AM -0700, Jim Ockers wrote:
> Has anyone on this list ever flashed a motherboard BIOS to
> a new BIOS image while running Linux as the base OS?
Yes, but the flashing utility was provided by the mobo vendor.  This was
a limited-computing board from NSC.

> I'm not sure how the LinuxBIOS people actually write their
> BIOS images to the flash; I've subscribed to the 
> linuxbios at clustermatic.org mailing list for quite some time,
> but I haven't osmosed the procedure yet.
I suspect they use their own 'high level' userland application (after
all, how high can you get when your flashing bios :^), and a specific
driver for the particular motherboard (knows the BIOS flash address, and
the i/o procedure).  Note the userland appliction could be 'cat'.

> PS We have an embedded industrial computer system that runs 
> Linux, and it's a real pain to have to open up the (very secure) 
> housing and attach a floppy disk drive data & power cables.  
> Hot-glued power connectors and a several wires that have to be
> wrestled aside to expose the floppy disk header make it fun!
> 
> Now imagine doing that on 1000 systems.  I'd like to be able to 
> ssh in and flash the BIOS, since that's all software and can 
> be automated.

Ohy.  I was about to suggest simply leaving the cables hanging out of
the machine; I guess that wouldn't work for 1000 units.  Perhaps a
bootable CD that boots FreeDOS & runs the flashing app?  Sounds like
what you need is lilo/grub to pull, load, and start a the flash
procedure.  Of course, now you and I are both dreaming.

-- 
Keith Hellman                             #include <disclaimer.h>
khellman at mcprogramming.com                from disclaimer import standard

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