[clug] can upgrading ubuntu kill your bios?

[Bob Edwards]

On 22/1/19 8:43 am, Chris Smart via linux wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Jan 2019, at 23:20, Robert Edwards via linux wrote:
>>
>> Hi Chris,
>>
>> Yep - I suspect that that is something like what may have happened.
>>
>> I've not heard of the LVFS project previously and still would expect
>> that any such action by the software upgrade process would be more
>> clear in what it was intending to do...
>>
> 
> Yeah, I don't know how Ubuntu does things but at least under Fedora it shows up as a separate "Firmware" update under the "Updates" tab in Software and via the pop-up when updates are available. I expect Ubuntu is the same, but if you're not looking for firmware there and blindly apply updates then you won't realise it's going to happen.
> 
> If you load Software and go to settings "Software Repositories" you should see "Linux Vendor Firmware Service" repo enabled, which you can disable if you don't want to get firmware updates at all (or if you want to manage them on the command line).
> 
> -c
> 

Thanks Chris.

I wasn't actually there when it was all happening.

I don't think I have ever used a GUI to manage software installation
on Linux, so not sure what I would have looked out for.

I do have a bunch of Dell laptops running 18.04 that I will no doubt,
at some point, upgrade to 19.04. I'm thankful to this list for making
me aware that this upgrade may well go ahead and reflash my boot roms.
Yet another potential vector for the bad guys to inject malware.

cheers,
Bob Edwards.