Linux BIOS Update

Hey all, I feel like I shouldn’t be making this post but I feel I need to do a dummy check. Been trying to update my BIOS on Linux Ubuntu 24.04 but am having zero luck. Using the link they shared in the email I follow the directions but I think I’m having issues with my thumb drive? It’s formatted as FAT32, at least it was formatted like that in windows, I can’t format on Linux for some reason because it’s having issues unmounting even though it formatted fine in the terminal. I can see the files on the thumb drive, but the system won’t let me boot to the thumb drive. Not sure what I’m doing wrong as this is my first time trying to update this way. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I have very little information on the topic, but have you made sure that Secure Boot is turned off?

I have indeed double checked secure boot is off. I’ve even gone in and erased all secure boot settings. The thumb drive is just not showing up on the EFI Boot Devices. What additional information would be useful? I’m trying my best here as a new Linux user haha

If you’re new to Linux, I hope you’re using one of the officially supported distributions – which should have fwupdmgr available.

If you are, try from a root (or sudo) prompt, fwupdmgr refresh then fwupdmgr update. It might ask you if you really want to do the update; answer “Y” and it should copy the necessary files, and then ask you to reboot the system. On the next reboot, the firmware patch should automatically apply.

While you can try to make an EFI-bootable USB stick, that wouldn’t be my first choice or recommendation personally.

Yes as I said in the original post I’m using Ubuntu, but there is no fwupdmgr update for this one. I was just trying to stay on top of the updates since I haven’t done any BIOS updates or anything since I put the new mainboard in, I’m not brand new to Linux, just returning after a long time away.

Guess that’s the welcome back experience. Maybe solve this unknown first.

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I’m a bit shocked Ubuntu doesn’t have it by default – but given that I’m not using an officially supported distribution (Ubuntu or otherwise), I’d say see if you can get fwupdmgr installed. Certainly for me, once I got it installed, it was a very straightforward matter to get my AMD FW13 up to date.

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There is fwupdmgr available, but it’s telling me I have no updates as I don’t think the latest update I was emailed about has been put on there yet? I currently have the .03 version of the BIOS and I’m seeing the latest version is .05. I’ll have to do some more troubleshooting tomorrow when I have a bit more time, was just curious if anyone else had the same issue.

You might have more luck posting in the respective BIOS update thread of your mainboard.

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So – for my AMD FW13, it came on 3.03 and I updated it with fwupdmgr to 3.05. For my FW16, it came on 3.03, and that’s the latest rev for it.

What exactly is your motherboard? Because when I went through a motherboard replacement process with FW recently, they actually sent me several e-mails about setting up my “new” motherboard… for a motherboard that was not the one I was getting a replacement on. Double-check, if you’re relying on an e-mail, and make sure it actually references the board you got. :sweat_smile:

He’s on a 13th gen i5.

That adds up. Not on fwupd.org, 3.05 is the latest available from Framework (Framework Laptop BIOS and Driver Releases (13th Gen Intel® Core™)). The caveats kind of kill me though…

  • "You must be running 3.05 or later to apply this update using EFI. " (!!?!?)
  • “When updating using the EFI update method, the update will fail if the internal SSD is formatted as MBR.”

I guess if I have to be running .05 to use the EFI updater I’m just not able to update? I saw that but didn’t really think I’d be unable to update my BIOS. Guess I’ll just wait around until that changes…

I guess you could put a spare SSD in the laptop and install Windows 11, just so you can do your BIOS updates :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

I am curious. Ubuntu 24.04 supports lvfs. If you were to sudo apt install fwupd you would be able to use fwupdmgr to update your bios.

Using fwupdmgr is, in my opinion, the easiest method for updating the bios. Is there a specific reason you’re opting to use the usb drive to update your bios?

I installed Ubuntu so I could be rid of Windows, I’m not going to reinstall windows just to update the BIOS, I’d rather just wait until the update gets pushed to fwupd.
And like I said in a previous post, I tried using fwupd, the update has not been pushed to that. As it states on the Framework BIOS software webpage, the only way to update to .05 is via EFI, which is why I started this thread in the first place…

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It does not look like the update will ever hit lvfs/fwupd. Because a part of it cannot be shipped / is not supported by fwupd (ME firmware, that early updates for the Intel systems did not have and AMD does not have in general).
If you cannot even get the EFI installer to boot than your problem is in creating an UEFI bootable USB stick. And chances are high you are doing sth. wrong there.

I would recommend piggy-backing off of anything else that generates a UEFI-bootable USB stick and includes the formatting and that you confirmed works (like the stick with which you presumably installed Linux). Then you do that, just erase the contents of the FAT32 partition that contains the efi/boot/bootx64.efi file and unpack the contents of the zip file onto it to match the previous folder structure. Also gives you a nice indication of what your are doing wrong with creating that bootable stick.

For a USB-stick to be UEFI-bootable it literally only takes a FAT32 partition (usually raw without any partition table for USB sticks) and the file at the efi/boot/bootx64.efi path. That is it. And FW seems to have no problems even supporting partitioned USB sticks with multiple FAT32 partitions and will detect every one of them as bootable, which many other BIOS’ do not do.

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Thank you so much for this reply. I’ll try and do some more trouble shooting to figure out why my system won’t recognize it as a bootable USB. This gives me a good direction to go in.