Theresa Arzadon-Labajo

Cannot update Dell BIOS with .BIN file

Posted by Theresa Arzadon-Labajo (tarzadon) on May 25 2012
Tech Stuff >> Unix-Linux
When I try to upgrade the BIOS on our PowerEdge servers with the BIN file provided by the Dell support website, I get the following error:
#./BIOS_H9K1G_LN32_2.7.0.BIN
...
                Unable to get the System Generation.
or
               The update failed to complete
What works instead:

Biosdisk Method

  • Download the Windows .exe BIOS file to your Dell.
  • Make sure you have syslinux installed
    yum install syslinux
    
  • Copy memdisk to /boot
    cp /usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk /boot/
    
  • Download the biosdisk tarball
    wget http://linux.dell.com/biosdisk/biosdisk-git-06112010.tar.gz
    
  • Extract the contents of the tarball
    tar zxvf biosdisk-git-06112010.tar.gz
    
  • Install the package
    cd biosdisk
    ./install.sh
    
  • Install the BIOS image to grub
    #biosdisk install R810-020700C.exe
    Creating BIOS floppy image at /tmp/R810-020700C.img
    Copied image to /boot/R810-020700C.img and updated bootloader
    
    # ls -ltr /boot
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8388608 May 25 10:56 R810-020700C.img
    
    Contents of grub.conf has been changed:
    title R810-020700C.img
            root (hd0,0)
            kernel /memdisk floppy c=8 s=32 h=64
            initrd /R810-020700C.img
    
  • Reboot the machine, choose the BIOS option in grub to begin flashing the new BIOS.
  • After the machine has rebooted, uninstall the BIOS line in grub.conf:
     biosdisk uninstall R810-020700C.exe
    
    The lines are no longer in grub.conf
    You may have to remove the .img file from /boot

Last changed: Feb 27 2020 at 3:30 PM

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