Getting an error saying "Error 331: Full FW Update using same version is not allowed. Include -allowsv in command line to allow it." when updating to newest bios?

Framework Laptop 13 Linux
1

I’ve been trying to update the bios of my framework 13 and I’m getting the following message when I try to apply the update

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I’m not sure, but is it possible that the bios link is incorrect? I can’t seem to find any old links for bios before 3.20. I’m currently on 3.17

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So the only thing I can think of for why this would be giving me this error would be if the wrong bios was listed as 3.20 for Linux. So, I was wondering if anyone else had this problem. Or any ideas if it wasn’t that.

2

I’m observing the same problem with my 11th gen. My version is showing 3.17 and updating to 3.20 shows the same error.

3

Ok cool, at least I’m not crazy (or haven’t messed up my bios somehow assuming we haven’t both done the same thing)

4

It took me four tries to solve this problem for my system. I did a bunch of searching online and it pulled up this thread, so I wanted to reply with what finally solved it for me.

In troubleshooting this error, I see the following conflicting information:

  1. Extract contents of zip folder to a FAT32 formatted USB drive.

  2. The EFI update will not work with filesystems that are formatted using MBR.

I kept formatting my GPT partition table with FAT32 and getting errors. I don’t know what exactly solved it but I’ll give you the following advice.

Format your flash drive with gdisk as a GPT drive:

sudo gdisk /dev/{disk ID}

The first command you should run in gdisk is o which is short for “create a new empty GUID partition table (GPT)”. Create a partition table with one partition and write it.

Then, write FAT32 to the partition you created.

sudo mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/{partition ID}

After that, you can verify that everything is good by unplugging and plugging the flash drive back in, then run the first command again.

sudo gdisk /dev/{disk ID}

If you get an error about conflicting or corrupted MBR and GPT tables partition tables, then good luck. I don’t know how I fixed that except doing everything all over again. I can suggest this.

  1. Unplug the USB drive.
  2. Plug the USB drive back in.
  3. Run sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/{disk ID} count=262144 bs=4096
  4. IMPORTANT:
  5. Unplug the USB drive.
  6. Plug the USB drive back in.
  7. Go back to the first gdisk command in this post.

If you get a GPT partition table formatted with a FAT32 partition successfully, then if you follow the instructions from Framework when you reboot, it should successfully write BIOS version 3.20.

Good luck!

5

Thank you, but the issue I’m having is not that my usb drive is not formatted properly. I have it showing up in the boot screen and can select it to run the updater. The problem is the bios is not updating and I’m getting an error saying that I’m trying to update to the same version that I’m on

6

I don’t know what exact problem you’re experiencing is, but I replied because I got exactly the same error message as you.

Like I said in my post. I formatted a USB drive as a GPT partition type, then wrote a FAT32 partition to it, which seemingly converted the partition type back to MBR. That flash drive seemed to upgrade my BIOS, but it ended up in a a boot-loop and failed to upgrade it.

If you can successfully format a flash drive with a GPT partition type and a FAT32 partition, you’ll probably have success upgrading your BIOS.

7

My bad, I thought you misunderstood and were having a different problem (i.e. that the usb isn’t appearing at all as a boot option). Sorry about that.
And thank you, while your steps didn’t solve my problem (I couldn’t get gdisk to say everything was ok after running the mkfs command), they did lead me to what eventually worked for me. Long story short, I used gparted instead of gdisk, and I had to update to 3.19 before updating to 3.20

8

Ok, I managed to solve this so I figured I’d outline what I did in case anyone else (including me in the future lol) runs into this again.

Side note, I started unplugging the usb after I ejected it once I was done moving the bios files to it. Then, replugging it in after my computer had shut down during the restart process. Don’t know if that changes anything, but it was something I did differently when it started working so worth a shot.

  1. format the flash drive with gparted (you may have to install it first). Delete any old partitions and create a new (gpt) partition table (this is under device for some reason). Then create a new partition and give it fat32 as the file system. Not sure if it’s necessary but I gave it a name and a label too.
  2. update to 3.19 first. Note that you may get an error saying you can’t upgrade to a lower vcn when you do this if you’ve been trying to upgrade to 3.20 from 3.17. At least I suspect that’s what’s happening. If this is happening, download 3.17 and try to upgrade to that. I know that first error says something about not being able to upgrade to the same version but for some reason this did something for me. Idk if there’s something that got changed when trying to upgrade to 3.20 that happens before it fails and some number gets updated, but this changed something for me and I was then able to upgrade to 3.19. Still got the error, but an actual progress bar appeared this time and the update went through.
  3. Finally, repeat and upgrade to 3.20

Hope this helps anyone

9

Glad you got it! I didn’t think of using gparted. I wish I knew why my repeated attempts at using gdisk finally fixed the problem. Oh well.

I’m going to try to direct Framework support to this thread so they can recommend this on the official docs.