Re: [Freedos-user] usb stick for bios upgrade

[Rugxulo]

Hi again,

On Sat, Apr 7, 2018 at 5:07 PM, Rugxulo  wrote:
>
> On Sat, Apr 7, 2018 at 7:54 AM, Kevin McCormick  wrote:
>
>> I have created several bootable usb sticks with syslinux and FreeDOS, but
>> they enter the FreeDOS Setup menu when they are booted.

Usually you press F5 to skip startup files (or single-step via F8).
IIRC, that depends upon not using "SWITCHES=/F /N" in CONFIG.SYS
(which saves a few seconds at bootup if you don't need the delay).

> In theory, I could make you a minimal 64 MB .img from a bootable
> FreeDOS jump drive (which would .ZIP to less than 1 MB). You could
> then low-level copy it onto larger drives, but it would only see 64 MB
> of space (presumably plenty for BIOS data??).

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/metados/metados-0.6-on-64mb-jump-drive.zip

I reformatted my (really old) jump drive with RUFUS (and its own
minimal FreeDOS install) atop Win7. But I deleted those few files and
just unpacked the metados.img via 7z. I also commented out SWITCHES,
as mentioned above, in FDCONFIG.SYS. So you'll probably still need to
press F5 at bootup. Since this is the vanilla MetaDOS image, full
sources are available in the same subdir on iBiblio. It's not a lot of
files, so it takes up (roughly) 1 MB ZIP'd.

For some odd reason, it never boots correctly on this Lenovo desktop,
but I also tested it successfully on my Dell laptop. Some obscure
partition error, but it's probably not worth worrying about. Just try
it, and see what happens. At worst, you waste a whole minute doing
(while unmounted) "cat metados*.img | pv > /dev/sdd" (or whatever).

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Re: [Freedos-user] usb stick for bios upgrade

[Ralf Quint]

On 4/7/2018 3:07 PM, Rugxulo wrote:

Hi,

N.B. Keep in mind that traditional BIOS (CSM) is going away entirely
in favor of UEFI. So, in future, you'll never have this problem again!

Well, it's just a trade in, you will just get different problems. Just 
try to recover a PC (or worse, laptop) that has it's UEFI setup trashed, 
for example by a faulty Windows 10 update... (I have three such corpses 
laying around here)


Ralf

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Re: [Freedos-user] usb stick for bios upgrade

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

N.B. Keep in mind that traditional BIOS (CSM) is going away entirely
in favor of UEFI. So, in future, you'll never have this problem again!

On Sat, Apr 7, 2018 at 7:54 AM, Kevin McCormick  wrote:
>
> I omitted to say that my operating system is Linux, Slackware 14.2.  The
> Windows solutions of Rufus or a dos formatted usb stick don't work for me
> since these require some form of Windows.  Unetbootin also does not work
> with FreeDOS I.2, but even with a 1.0 image, the usb stick goes into the
> setup routine.

There was a writeup on one guy's blog about FD 1.1 under Linux
("FreeDOS 1.1 Bootable USB Image"), see here:

http://joelinoff.com/blog/?p=431

> I  am now looking at:
>  https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Flashing_BIOS_from_Linux
> and
>  https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/BIOS_Update#FreeDOS_environment

I'm no expert, but here's some more links:

* https://wiki.debian.org/FlashBIOS
* https://wiki.debian.org/DualBoot/FreeDOS
* 
https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/sln171755/updating-the-dell-bios-in-linux-and-ubuntu-environments?lang=en#Creating%20a%20USB%20Bootable%20Storage%20Device

> I have created several bootable usb sticks with syslinux and FreeDOS, but
> they enter the FreeDOS Setup menu when they are booted.

Perhaps you want (Perl-based) sys-freedos-linux?

https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/dos/sys/sys-freedos-linux/sys-freedos-linux.zip

> I believe I want just the COMMAND.COM, IO.SYS, and a few other files to have 
> the DOS
> functionality that will be needed for the bios update .EXE file.

MSDOS.SYS + IO.SYS = KERNEL.SYS (at least, in FreeDOS)

Bare bones would be shell, kernel, config files, and possibly other
things (e.g. XMS memory manager, keyboard or mouse drivers, etc).

* 
https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/distributions/unofficial/metados/

> I imagine the .EXE has the bios rom image included, so some compression 
> software is probably needed.

I don't understand what you mean here. I doubt you need any
compression software for this, but I too don't reflash BIOSes a lot.

> The MSI bios upgrade process is in the initial boot, where you are supposed
> to press DEL to enter bios setup and then select something like M-FLASH or
> FLASH BIOS which then asks you to select a file from the USB stick.  At this
> point the upgrade process stops with a message like unusable file or missing
> files or something which I don't remember exactly.

What file system are you using? Maybe it only recognizes certain ones?
FAT16? FAT32? Dunno.

Part of the problem with pre-made images is differently-sized disks.
In theory, I could make you a minimal 64 MB .img from a bootable
FreeDOS jump drive (which would .ZIP to less than 1 MB). You could
then low-level copy it onto larger drives, but it would only see 64 MB
of space (presumably plenty for BIOS data??).

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Re: [Freedos-user] usb stick for bios upgrade

[Eric Auer]

Hi Kevin,

the point was that if you have a modern BIOS, it will
just look for a data file on a FAT-formatted USB stick
and then update *itself* - You do NOT have to boot any
DOS from the stick to do that. Of course you can exit
the setup of FreeDOS 1.0 or 1.2 or skip entering it.

Trying to follow the "flashing BIOS" instructions for
cases when you had to use old DOS executables as flash
tool might be a waste of effort with more modern BIOS.

Please check whether your BIOS really wants to run a
DOS exe file for anything. More likely, it does not.
If your BIOS just needs a data file, then you do NOT
have to install any DOS on the stick at all. Simply
make sure that the stick is FAT formatted and not
NTFS or ExFAT formatted, then copy your BIOS data
to the stick and let the BIOS do the rest at boot.

Cheers, Eric

PS: You could use GPARTED to check and modify which
filesystem your stick uses, with user-friendly GUI.
Just make sure to write the stick, not OTHER disks.

PPS: IF you find out that you really want to run DOS
executables, you can install a boot floppy image on
a stick instead of using entire DOS distro images.



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Re: [Freedos-user] usb stick for bios upgrade

[Kevin McCormick]

I omitted to say that my operating system is Linux, Slackware 14.2.  The
Windows solutions of Rufus or a dos formatted usb stick don't work for
me since these require some form of Windows.  Unetbootin also does not
work with FreeDOS I.2, but even with a 1.0 image, the usb stick goes
into the setup routine. 

I  am now looking at:
 https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Flashing_BIOS_from_Linux
and
 https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/BIOS_Update#FreeDOS_environment

I do not want to brick the motherboard or reformat the hard drive, and
since I rarely upgrade bios I am not familiar with the process.  I do
have a Windows virtualbox guest on the computer, but the usb stick is
not accessible from that.  I think there is some process for doing that,
but I haven't looked into it.

I have created several bootable usb sticks with syslinux and FreeDOS,
but they enter the FreeDOS Setup menu when they are booted.  I believe I
want just the COMMAND.COM, IO.SYS, and a few other files to have the DOS
functionality that will be needed for the bios update .EXE file.  I
imagine the .EXE has the bios rom image included, so some compression
software is probably needed.

The MSI bios upgrade process is in the initial boot, where you are
supposed to press DEL to enter bios setup and then select something like
M-FLASH or FLASH BIOS which then asks you to select a file from the USB
stick.  At this point the upgrade process stops with a message like
unusable file or missing files or something which I don't remember exactly.

Thanks

On 04/06/2018 08:58 AM, Kevin McCormick wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I subscribed to this list because I am having a lot of trouble making
> a simple dos usb stick to upgrade my computer bios.  It is appalling
> that the my motherboard manufacturer does not have the tools for linux
> (or windows for that matter) and the AMI bios is equally appalling. 
> However, I really don't want to buy another motherboard.
>
> I have no trouble installing freedos into a qemu virtual disk, or
> making a bootable usb stick, but I don't know how to get around the
> freedos setup routine and just have the functionality of a dos boot
> floppy.  Basically, I think I want to copy the necessary "base" files
> onto the usb stick and have the needed /sys files.  I believe that is
> enough for the bios flash to work.
>
> The motherboard is MSI 7677 E61 (B3) mini-tx intel socket 1155.
>
> Thanks
>
>
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