Host-bios-upgrade

Maybe some recent events let to BIOS update releases by various vendors around the end of 2017

• from https://planet.debian.org/ check this http://sven.stormbind.net/blog/posts/misc_bios_updates_dell_latitude_lenovo_thinkpad/

"Maybe some recent events let to BIOS update releases by various vendors around the end of 2017. So I set out to update (for the first time) the BIOS of my laptops. Searching the interwebs for some hints I found a lot outdated information involving USB thumb drives, CDs, FreeDOS in variants but also some useful stuff. So here is the short list of what actually worked in case I need to do it again."

Dell Latitude E7470 (UEFI boot setup)

1. Download the file "Latitude_E7x70_1.18.5.exe" (or whatever is the current release).
2. Move the file to "/boot/efi/".
3. Boot into the one time boot menu with F12 during the BIOS/UEFI start.
4. Select the "Flash BIOS Update" menu option.
5. Use your mouse to select the update file visually and watch the magic.

So no USB sticks, FreeDOS, SystemrescueCD images or other tricks involved. If it's cool that the computer in your computers computer running Minix (or whatever is involved in this case) updates your firmware is a different topic, but the process is pretty straight forward.

for thinkpad model P50

1. Download the BIOS Update bootable CD image from Lenovo "n1eur31w.iso" (Select Windows as OS so it's available for download).
2. Extract the eltorito boot image from the image "geteltorito -o thinkpad.img Downloads/n1eur31w.iso".
3. Dump it on a USB thumb drive "dd if=thinkpad.img of=/dev/sdX".
4. Boot from this thumb drive and follow the instructions of the installer.

'I guess the process is similar for almost all ThinkPads.'

supermicro

• For supermicro it looks like cli won't work.

they have 'Supermicro Update Manager (SUM)' https://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/SMS_SUM.cfm

to update bios 1ST a list of all mac address need to be sent to sm support, they'll reply with keys then TBD .

Is there a better way?