[SOLVED] BIOS chip replacement question

I have a server system with an ASUS Z170-WS motherboard (with UEFI) at which an ASUS technician recommends that I need to replace my BIOS chip.
The company from which I purchased the system (under warranty) agrees to carry out this operation.
My problem is if this operation will affect my operating system, Slackware64-current.
It will start with the new BIOS or will need to reinstall the operating system and all services.
If anyone has encountered such a problem, please tell me what to expect.

I do not think that replacing the BIOS firmware, even it being an UEFI, will affect the operating system (which lives in a hard drive) in some way.

In the worst case, if you have multiple hard drive, you may need to reconfigure the boot device and/or your favorite BIOS settings.

Yet, being a Romanian myself, I strongly recommend you to backup entirely your hard drive(s) and wipe them clean (if you can't remove them from the box) before sending the computer back to the seller.

Things get complicated.
The ASUS technician has apologized and has now recommended replacing the motherboard with the statement that the operating system will be OK.

Yet, being a Romanian myself, I strongly recommend you to backup entirely your hard drive(s) and wipe them clean (if you can't remove them from the box) before sending the computer back to the seller.

This is not a problem I will stand next to the technician when making the replacement. I did the same thing when I showed it what USB BIOS Flashback means (the existing BIOS version did not recognize the processor and commanded another).

This is do-able, but I'd back up my data first.

Go into the set-up for UEFI now and write down (or take smartphone pics of) all of the settings on all of the pages. Be mentally prepared for the settings to change with the new MB.

Take a good look at the MB itself and note any jumper positions. There shouldn't be many, if any, but a good idea is to be prepared for everything.

Also make note of which cable from which HD goes into which SATA slot on the MB. Same for any other connections from the case to the MB.

Thanks jamesf.

Go into the set-up for UEFI now and write down (or take smartphone pics of) all of the settings on all of the pages. Be mentally prepared for the settings to change with the new MB.

I always notice BIOS changes and try to do as few as possible. I hope the new BIOS is the same as what I have with updates to Intel® Management Engine and Spectre & Meltdown microcodes.

I´m sorry, that was mistake, unfortunately yes, there is problem with Linux system. We can provide you ARS service for the motherboard. ARS service: we send you replacement motherboard with all reworks and last update, after you receive this motherboard, you swap it in your server system and the defective motherboard you send to us. In this case you can´t need reinstall OS.

They promised me that the motherboard will be the same as I have now.

Take a good look at the MB itself and note any jumper positions. There shouldn't be many, if any, but a good idea is to be prepared for everything. Also make note of which cable from which HD goes into which SATA slot on the MB. Same for any other connections from the case to the MB.

I will do that!

Another question.
If I replace the UEFI motherboard I will have to run eliloconfig (possibly from chroot).

Originally Posted by teoberi Another question. If I replace the UEFI motherboard I will have to run eliloconfig (possibly from chroot).

In Linux as long as all settings are the same there will be no need to re-run lilo. All of that information is stored on the drive and unaffected by a mobo change to the same model. Windows, if you have it, might be affected since it being proprietary worries you may be "pirating" and checks some system hardware IDs for changes. Hopefully that is not a concern for you as it can be a pita to workaround..

Originally Posted by enorbet In Linux as long as all settings are the same there will be no need to re-run lilo. All of that information is stored on the drive and unaffected by a mobo change to the same model.

Well, but the boot menu in the UEFI firmware that is tied to the MOBO and stored in NVRAM, in case it be used. if the MOBO is changed the NVRAM variables will of course be lost. However elilo or directly efibootmgr can be used to write the menu entries of again.

As Didier said, you will not have any NVRAM boot menu entries for any of your installed OS, so for the initial boot you may want to have a bootable usb device plugged in. I would suggest that you install rEFInd to a usb drive and boot it. Upon bootup rEFInd will scan your system for bootable efi images and will present a menu to launch them. From there you should be able to launch your Slackware install without problems. Once in Slackware, you can run eliloconfig to install a NRAM boot menu entry but beware that this will also replace your elilo.conf file and overwrite any custom changes that you may have made.

You can get the rEFInd image here: http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/getting.html. Scroll down to the "Getting rEFInd from Your OS's Repositories" section and look for the USB flash drive image download link

some efi bios will allow you to add NVRAM boot entries from the bios setup.

If you can access the efishell still you should have a wealth of tools to use but I'd doubt you need it. More likely that you can just plug in and go or fix a few naming entries in OS.

teoberi - It would be helpful if you specified whether or not you are using UEFI or have it set to Legacy (BIOS) mode. This would result in specific responses and eliminate cruft and confusion.

UEFI.
Today is the day for replacing the motherboard.

You can use eliloconfig from chroot after having bind mounted /dev /proc and /sys. Don't forget to start the machine in UEFI mode (assuming that Legacy mode be an option), and mount your EFI system partition as /boot/efi before running eliloconfig.

But maybe running eliloconfig is not even necessary. First, just try booting as is.

After replacing the motherboard I had to solve the following problems:
1. Reconfigure BIOS settings
UEFI BIOS Utility -> Advanced -> APM Configuration -> Restore AC Power Loss -> Power On
UEFI BIOS Utility -> Boot -> Fast Boot -> Disabled
UEFI BIOS Utility -> Boot -> Secure Boot -> OS Type -> Other OS
2. Missing NVRAM boot menu entries for Slackware64-current (the only operating system installed and a single HDD) as Didier said!
I have 2 solutions for that:
2.1. hard way -> run eliloconfig from chroot (I had problems with this method when I switched to UEFI and ELILO, elilo.conf was tricky for me I had to use "verbose = 5" for debugging);
2.2. easy way -> rEFInd boot Slackware smoothly (I could choose generic and huge kernel) thanks to laprjns!
3. The new motherboard had different MAC addresses for the two gigabit network cards
The easy solution was to delete the /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules file and after restart I got a new file with the correct settings.
I hope there will be no further problems.
I still have to talk to ASUS server support to make sure the Intel® Management Engine problem has been resolved.