Scope:
This document discusses the functionality of the rbu driver only.
-It does not cover the support needed from aplications to enable the BIOS to
+It does not cover the support needed from applications to enable the BIOS to
update itself with the image downloaded in to the memory.
Overview:
and notebooks (starting from those sold in 2005).
Please go to http://support.dell.com register and you can find info on
OpenManage and Dell Update packages (DUP).
+Libsmbios can also be used to update BIOS on Dell systems go to
+http://linux.dell.com/libsmbios/ for details.
-Dell_RBU driver supports BIOS update using the monilothic image and packetized
-image methods. In case of moniolithic the driver allocates a contiguous chunk
+Dell_RBU driver supports BIOS update using the monolithic image and packetized
+image methods. In case of monolithic the driver allocates a contiguous chunk
of physical pages having the BIOS image. In case of packetized the app
using the driver breaks the image in to packets of fixed sizes and the driver
would place each packet in contiguous physical memory. The driver also
maintains a link list of packets for reading them back.
If the dell_rbu driver is unloaded all the allocated memory is freed.
-The rbu driver needs to have an application which will inform the BIOS to
-enable the update in the next system reboot.
+The rbu driver needs to have an application (as mentioned above)which will
+inform the BIOS to enable the update in the next system reboot.
The user should not unload the rbu driver after downloading the BIOS image
or updating.
/sys/class/firmware/dell_rbu/data
/sys/devices/platform/dell_rbu/image_type
/sys/devices/platform/dell_rbu/data
+/sys/devices/platform/dell_rbu/packet_size
The driver supports two types of update mechanism; monolithic and packetized.
These update mechanism depends upon the BIOS currently running on the system.
Most of the Dell systems support a monolithic update where the BIOS image is
copied to a single contiguous block of physical memory.
-In case of packet mechanism the single memory can be broken in smaller chuks
+In case of packet mechanism the single memory can be broken in smaller chunks
of contiguous memory and the BIOS image is scattered in these packets.
By default the driver uses monolithic memory for the update type. This can be
-changed to contiguous during the driver load time by specifying the load
+changed to packets during the driver load time by specifying the load
parameter image_type=packet. This can also be changed later as below
echo packet > /sys/devices/platform/dell_rbu/image_type
+In packet update mode the packet size has to be given before any packets can
+be downloaded. It is done as below
+echo XXXX > /sys/devices/platform/dell_rbu/packet_size
+In the packet update mechanism, the user needs to create a new file having
+packets of data arranged back to back. It can be done as follows
+The user creates packets header, gets the chunk of the BIOS image and
+places it next to the packetheader; now, the packetheader + BIOS image chunk
+added together should match the specified packet_size. This makes one
+packet, the user needs to create more such packets out of the entire BIOS
+image file and then arrange all these packets back to back in to one single
+file.
+This file is then copied to /sys/class/firmware/dell_rbu/data.
+Once this file gets to the driver, the driver extracts packet_size data from
+the file and spreads it accross the physical memory in contiguous packet_sized
+space.
+This method makes sure that all the packets get to the driver in a single operation.
+
+In monolithic update the user simply get the BIOS image (.hdr file) and copies
+to the data file as is without any change to the BIOS image itself.
+
Do the steps below to download the BIOS image.
1) echo 1 > /sys/class/firmware/dell_rbu/loading
2) cp bios_image.hdr /sys/class/firmware/dell_rbu/data
The /sys/class/firmware/dell_rbu/ entries will remain till the following is
done.
echo -1 > /sys/class/firmware/dell_rbu/loading
+Until this step is completed the driver cannot be unloaded.
+Also echoing either mono, packet or init in to image_type will free up the
+memory allocated by the driver.
-Until this step is completed the drivr cannot be unloaded.
+If a user by accident executes steps 1 and 3 above without executing step 2;
+it will make the /sys/class/firmware/dell_rbu/ entries disappear.
+The entries can be recreated by doing the following
+echo init > /sys/devices/platform/dell_rbu/image_type
+NOTE: echoing init in image_type does not change it original value.
Also the driver provides /sys/devices/platform/dell_rbu/data readonly file to
-read back the image downloaded. This is useful in case of packet update
-mechanism where the above steps 1,2,3 will repeated for every packet.
-By reading the /sys/devices/platform/dell_rbu/data file all packet data
-downloaded can be verified in a single file.
-The packets are arranged in this file one after the other in a FIFO order.
+read back the image downloaded.
NOTE:
-This driver requires a patch for firmware_class.c which has the addition
-of request_firmware_nowait_nohotplug function to wortk
-Also after updating the BIOS image an user mdoe application neeeds to execute
-code which message the BIOS update request to the BIOS. So on the next reboot
-the BIOS knows about the new image downloaded and it updates it self.
-Also don't unload the rbu drive if the image has to be updated.
+This driver requires a patch for firmware_class.c which has the modified
+request_firmware_nowait function.
+Also after updating the BIOS image a user mode application needs to execute
+code which sends the BIOS update request to the BIOS. So on the next reboot
+the BIOS knows about the new image downloaded and it updates itself.
+Also don't unload the rbu driver if the image has to be updated.
git://ftp.safe.ca / safe / jmp / linux-2.6 / blobdiff