Update your Thinkpad’s bios with Linux or OpenBSD

Small howto to explain how to update your bios with Linux or OpenBSD.

• Go to lenovo support
• Use the search bar to find your product (example for me, x270)
• Choose the right product (if necessary) and click search
• On the right side, click on Update Your System
• Click on BIOS/UEFI
• Choose *BIOS Update (Bootable CD) for Windows *
• Download

For me the file is called like this : r0iuj25wd.iso

• With OpenBSD:

  $ doas pkg_add geteltorito
  

quirks-3.7 signed on 2018-09-09T13:15:19Z geteltorito-0.6: ok ```

• With Debian:

  $ sudo apt-get install genisoimage
  

Now we will extract the bios update :

$ geteltorito -o bios_update.img r0iuj25wd.iso
Booting catalog starts at sector: 20 
Manufacturer of CD: NERO BURNING ROM VER 12
Image architecture: x86
Boot media type is: harddisk
El Torito image starts at sector 27 and has 43008 sector(s) of 512 Bytes

Image has been written to file "bios_update.img".

This will create a file called bios_update.img.

Please check twice on your computer the name of your USB key.

• With OpenBSD :

  $ doas dd if=bios_update.img of=/dev/rsd1c
  

• With Linux :

  $ sudo dd if=bios_update.img of=/dev/sda
  

Now all you need is to reboot, to boot on your USB key and follow the instructions.

Enjoy 😉