[clug] can upgrading ubuntu kill your bios?

[Robert Edwards]

On 21/1/19 7:13 pm, Andrew Donnellan wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Jan 2019 at 18:53, Bob Edwards via linux <linux at lists.samba.org>
> wrote:
> 
>> I have a colleague who recently upgraded his Dell XPS13 laptop from
>> Ubuntu 18.04 to 18.10 and, as part of the process, it seemed to
>> attempt to update the BIOS.
>>
>> I have never heard of a Linux distro, let alone Ubuntu, wanting to
>> update the BIOS. Further, if this was thing, I would have expected
>> it to ask first, possibly more than once.
>>
>> Something apparently went wrong during the BIOS flashing and now the
>> laptop is a brick.
>>
>> I have looked around on the web, but I can't see any evidence that
>> Ubuntu would pre-emptively update the BIOS during an O/S upgrade.
>>
>> Is this a thing, or has the laptop been infected with some sort of
>> malware?
>>
> 
> BIOS is dead, long live UEFI!
> 
> Possibly something LVFS/fwupd related? https://fwupd.org/
> 
> 
> Andrew

Thanks Andrew. I have never heard of LVFS - now I know. It almost
certainly is that that caused the reflashing of the boot up firmware
that I referred to in passing as BIOS, but is more likely UEFI...

I'll get my colleague to investigate further.

cheers,

Bob Edwards.

> 
> 
>>
>> cheers,
>> Bob Edwards.
>>
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>>
> 
>