Dell BIOS Upgrade from Commnad Line

BIOS update utilities and files are often provided as Windows executable files. This guide provides information for Dell users to use such files without using Windows or any emulation software.


System and Bios Details: Dell OptiPlex 740 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+

Os & Kernel Version: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5 (Tikanga) 2.6.18-8.el5xen #1 SMP


Default Bios Vesrion: 1.1.18

Upgraded Vesrion: 2.1.8

Problem Faced: Even though "grep svm /proc/cpuinfo" returns AMD-VT Enabled Cpu ,But not able to install any Full Virtual Guest.After a lot of Trial and error method came to know its an problem with BIOS Version(VT is Disabled on BIOS, after enabled the option also it didnt allowed me to create the Guest ) not with the cpu, xen or Fedora 10 kvm i tried.

After a long struggle with out using the Windows/Dos Environment(not even any USB or Floppy Drive or any media), Upgraded the bios with the utillity named biosdisk provided by Dell.

Steps To do:

1) Download the driver from the Dell Site on to the machine where you want to upgrade the bios.In mycase i got it from the below link and stored it under /root .


http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz&releaseid=R191746&SystemID=PLX_PNT_740&servicetag=&os=WLH&osl=en&deviceid=162&devlib=0&typecnt=0&vercnt=9&catid=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=1&fileid=263245

2) Next Download and install the biosdisk rpm from the dell site.

rpm -ivh http://linux.dell.com/biosdisk/biosdisk-0.75-2.noarch.rpm

3) Next is to create a NEW BOOT LOADER to boot the image from the hard drive to flash the BIOS,with out nedding a floppy.

Note: Take a complete Backup of you /boot partiton before executing the below command

biosdisk mkpkg --install /root/O740-218.EXE


It will create a new boot image file and you can see some new entry like below in the grub.conf file.


title O740-218.img
root (hd0,4)
kernel /memdisk
initrd /O740-218.img

4) Reboot the system with the new image and follow the onscreen instruction for you BIOS Upgradation.

5) After the upgradation Goto Bios--Security-No Execute after the reboot "dmidecode -s bios-version" you can see the new Bios and now the xen will allow you to create Full Virtualization Guest.


Reference Links: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DellBIOS