[RESPONDED] Arch BIOS Update Guide

Hey hey guys,

Just wanted to add a few things that I had to learn the hard way; maybe save other people some time.

  1. My /root /home and /swap directories were all encrypted. So the commands were slightly different. Once I got to the CLI from the Arch ISO:
# I opened my LUKS partition with all my encrypted directories first
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/nvme0np2 crypt
[enter password]

# From here my encrypted directories were prepended with @ (@, @home,,
# @swap). To mount the root dir "@" I needed to use an extra flag:

mount -o subvol=@ /dev/mapper/crypt /mnt 

# Then I mounted the boot partition:
mount /dev/nvme0np1 /mnt/boot

# After that everything was basically the same:
arch-chroot /mnt 
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
exit
umount /mnt/boot
umount /mnt
cryptsetup luksClose crypt
poweroff
  1. I tried to update my BIOS 3.06 → 3.19 and it failed. Following this thread I learned that you can’t skip those intermediary BIOS updates.

So my upgrade path was:
3.06 → 3.10 → 3.17 → 3.19

I had to run the commands from #1 every single time. Or, I guess, I could’ve created 3 USB sticks for each update beforehand. Hindsight.

Finally, this command shows the correct BIOS version:

sudo dmidecode -s bios-version

Hopefully, I saved other people a headache!

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