I updated from Gnome 45 → 46 today (smooth upgrade, thanks to everyone who made it happen ) and happened to look at my firmware version when taking a screenshot.
Unfortunately it’s several versions out of date and the manufacturer (Lenovo) supports only .exe programs to update it from Windows. They also haven’t pushed the updates to LVFS/fwupd. I have contacted Lenovo support but don’t really expect a positive outcome as far as them pushing the updates to LVFS.
General opinion on the interwebs seem to be:
Install Windows onto a secondary drive/partition and perform the BIOS update that way
Install something called Windows PE which is supposed to be some free but closed source live environment to perform the update
Is there any way to unpack the exe archive and perform the update from openSUSE, has anyone got better ideas?
When upgrading the UEFI I referred to their “User Guide ThinkPad T530, T530i, and W530” , Section “Updating your system UEFI BIOS”. Their procedure worked as described.
As with many systems, it’s actually easier than you think (compared to the other solution provided).
You copy the .exe to the EFI partition and the update will happen.
.
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Might also read this thread, as Discover can update (using lvfs and fwupd). my Dell - only 7 posts to read
On my home-built desktop (Asus mobo, AMD proc, AMD graphics), I simply copy the BIOS update file to a USB stick, then boot into the (Asus) BIOS settings, BIOS → Update section, then select the USB stick.
The BIOS itself does the update - even offers to backup current BIOS, in case the new update fails.
I’m surprised Lenovo doesn’t offer a simple solution, using the BIOS.
thinkbook:~ # btrfs filesystem usage -T /Crucial/
Overall:
Device size: 3.64TiB
Device allocated: 2.62TiB
Device unallocated: 1.01TiB
Device missing: 0.00B
Device slack: 0.00B
Used: 2.62TiB
Free (estimated): 1.02TiB (min: 525.38GiB)
Free (statfs, df): 1.02TiB
Data ratio: 1.00
Metadata ratio: 2.00
Global reserve: 512.00MiB (used: 0.00B)
Multiple profiles: no
Data Metadata System
Id Path single DUP DUP Unallocated Total Slack
-- --------- ------- -------- --------- ----------- ------- -----
1 /dev/sda1 2.58TiB 44.00GiB 80.00MiB 1.01TiB 3.64TiB -
-- --------- ------- -------- --------- ----------- ------- -----
Total 2.58TiB 22.00GiB 40.00MiB 1.01TiB 3.64TiB 0.00B
Used 2.57TiB 21.21GiB 336.00KiB
thinkbook:~ #
Booting into Windows 11 is PITA. However every other year some appliance wants to talk to Windows only. A few years ago I shredded the flash storage of my Garmin FR735XT.
I went to a friend of mine and tried to recover from the mishap. However the Garmin site had been attacked by ransom ware and was down for a week.
In the meantime I installed free Windows 10 from ISO on the 6700k, a sibling of erlangen. When the Garmin site was great again I attached the watch and got recovery within a few seconds.
From what I’ve seen of PC building in Youtube, the UEFI BIOS of discrete mobos are quite nice looking and offers a lot of customization
But mine, though UEFI looks like the 90s blue screen BIOS and has very limited customization, happy Lenovo is at least pushing out updates for it
Thanks everyone for your inputs, learned one could update the BIOS in quite a few different ways than I knew was possible!
What I ended up doing and worked for me was:
Downloaded Hiren’s BootCD PE ISO and copied it and the firmware updater exe file to the Ventoy vfat partition on an external SSD drive.
Disabled Secure Boot and booted up into the Hiren ISO which is based on Windows 11 PE but with additional drivers and tools. Also, I found it wasn’t possible to create a Windows PE ISO without a working Windows installation.
Copied the firmware updater exe file to “Documents” and installed it.
Loud fan noises, several restarts, and some flashing progress/verification screens later I was able to see the updated BIOS.
Updated BIOS settings as those were reset to default after the upgrade and enabled Secure Boot
First time I did this on my secondary machine (same model as primary but with lower specs) I wasn’t quick enough to cancel the countdown that wiped the boot menu entries. Had to boot without Secure Boot, update bootloader settings from Yast and reboot back with Secure Boot enabled.
Anyway, for all these efforts I was rewarded with an HSI 1 pass result from Gnome device security for the very first time since I purchased this device a few years ago.