Update BIOS on a Thinkpad with Linux

Motivation

Wanted to update my BIOS in a hope to fix some ACPI warnings on boot

des. 06 01:56:14 archlinux kernel: ACPI: Core revision 20170728
des. 06 01:56:14 archlinux kernel: ACPI Error: [\_SB_.PCI0.XHC_.RHUB.HS11] Namespace lookup failure, AE_NOT_FOUND (20170728/dswload-210)
des. 06 01:56:14 archlinux kernel: ACPI Exception: AE_NOT_FOUND, During name lookup/catalog (20170728/psobject-252)
des. 06 01:56:14 archlinux kernel: ACPI Exception: AE_NOT_FOUND, (SSDT:ProjSsdt) while loading table (20170728/tbxfload-228)
des. 06 01:56:14 archlinux kernel: ACPI Error: 1 table load failures, 10 successful (20170728/tbxfload-246)

First problem is that Lenovo only releases official update tools for Windows. After some research I eventually found a solution that could be performed using only a Linux system – the same system I wanted to upgrade.

Guide

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad T470p (20J6), and support downloads are located at the Lenovo support pages.

If you have different model just use the search bar. If you’re not sure what model you have, you can use dmidecode to find out. On my system the relevant output looks like the below

# dmidecode | grep 'System Information' -A 8
System Information
Manufacturer: LENOVO
Product Name: 20J677LOVE
Version: ThinkPad T470p
Serial Number: PF0T****
UUID: E379BE4C-2D34-11B2-A85C-************
Wake-up Type: Power Switch
SKU Number: LENOVO_MT_20J6_BU_Think_FM_ThinkPad T470p
Family: ThinkPad T470p

Download the “BIOS Update (Bootable CD) […]” ISO image. You don’t need the utility. In the details section of the download, read the README so that you understand the risks of updating the BIOS. The file I downloaded was called r0fuj15wd.iso.

Download a tool called geteltorito to extract the boot image from the ISO file. I went through a great deal of trouble to figure out how to make a proper bootable USB pen drive from that ISO. This tool was the only one that actually yielded proper results. You will need Perl in order to run this program.

$ geteltorito.pl -o ~/lenovo-bios.img ~/downloads/r0fuj15wd.iso

Now you should have a proper disk image ready to be written to a USB drive. Write to disk and follow up with a sync of pending IO writes.

# dd if=~/lenovo-bios.img of=/dev/sdc bs=1M status=progress
# sync

Reboot and see if you’re able to boot into the USB. If not, you may have to change some settings in BIOS before you’ll be able to contine.

• Disable Secure Boot
• Enable Legacy Boot option (not just force UEFI)
• Set the boot order
  • Optionally you can press F12 when the full screen logo appears when booting to trigger the Boot device selection menu.

Follow the on-screen instructions to update the BIOS.

There’s also an option in there to change the model name suffix of the system. I don’t know if it will interfere with future updates, so might not be a great idea.

Aftermath

After the update it looked like this instead

mai 13 03:20:30 prodigy kernel: ACPI: Core revision 20180105
mai 13 03:20:30 prodigy kernel: ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Failure looking up [\_SB.PCI0.XHC.RHUB.HS11], AE_NOT_FOUND (20180105/dswload-211)
mai 13 03:20:30 prodigy kernel: ACPI Error: AE_NOT_FOUND, During name lookup/catalog (20180105/psobject-252)
mai 13 03:20:30 prodigy kernel: ACPI Error: AE_NOT_FOUND, (SSDT:ProjSsdt) while loading table (20180105/tbxfload-228)
mai 13 03:20:30 prodigy kernel: ACPI Error: 1 table load failures, 10 successful (20180105/tbxfload-246)

Didn’t solve my ACPI errors, but my screen is brighter on clearer than before. Or I’m imagining things. Not sure. Either way I like to have the latest BIOS.

References

• https://workaround.org/article/updating-the-bios-on-lenovo-laptops-from-linux-using-a-usb-flash-stick/