upgrading my BIOS on Linux
 

http://www.wimsbios.com/phpBB2/topic10809.html#51732

this is the next best place i thought of posting this:
i am not really going to upgrade my BIOS, but i am wondering if most motherboards today allow upgrading of BIOS to be simply a matter of running an executable? or a more difficult process is required, eg boot up from a disk etc.

i found a page that updates the BIOS simply by wget and such:
http://www.linuxscrew.com/2007/12/09...p-with-ubuntu/

it just sounds very dangerous to me (to be made so easy to update the BIOS). anyone knows if i'm just too pessimistic?

-jeff

It depends on the mobo manufacturer. For example for my Intel board, I can just download a bootable CD iso containing a dos implementation, flashing program, and the BIOS file, it updates just fine. Then for my Gigabyte board there is a BIOS option that will update the BIOS from a BIOS file on a floppy disk or other media. Many times you can just use a DOS boot disk with your BIOS and a flashing program on there. Any BIOS update has a risk involved, all I can recommend is that you not ever use wine to do it.

any time you upgrade bios look at the change log you will find 90 percent of the bios up grades are for windows because windows tries to control the bios. after looking at the bios and you feel it is for a hardware issue then go for it. But if you read there change log you will find for linux most of the upgrades are not needed. And if you read the manufacture specs on this you will get about the same out put I just gave. Flashing has become very simple today but years ago you could ruin a machine in a heartbeat.

@ Drakeo
That's true, but sometimes they also fix bugs in the BIOS and add features and support for newer hardware. So, I mean, there are often reasons to upgrade even if you don't use Window$.

Well, there was recently that incident with Seagate firmware updates bricking their drives, so I would agree with Drakeo, you should have a good reason, and it is inherently dangerous.