Comments on: Upgrade / Downgrade your Dell Bios On Ubuntu

By: Celso

Celso — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 19:31:32 +0000

did you find an solution for this?

By: PGlynn

PGlynn — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:37:07 +0000

Hey there, i’m having the same struct issue with python. i can’t locate the py file. could you post on how to fix the file?

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:14:28 +0000

Hi There, I can’t seem to find my bios in the dell’s list (http://linux.dell.com/repo/firmware/bios-hdrs). Do you know how often Dell updates this list? or do you know where else I can find my bios? Here’s my info:

Libsmbios version: 2.2.13
Product Name: Vostro 1320
Vendor: Dell Inc.
BIOS Version: A02
System ID: 0x02BB

Thank you very much.

By: Bigbrovar

Bigbrovar — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:30:02 +0000

sorry mate, maybe dell took it down?

By: the green knight

the green knight — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:28:06 +0000

I am trying to downgrade from A05 to 00 so i can use a new battery. i am using ubuntu 9.04 and my system ID is 0x02B0 but I cannot find a matching directory on the list of firmware. any ideas?

By: Bigbrovar

Bigbrovar — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 09:25:27 +0000

seems to be a python problem. i did some googling of and i found this http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/firmware-tools-devel/2009-March/000427.html it would seems adding import struct to this file /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/libsmbios_c/rbu_hdr.py solves the problem. remember to backup first before you do this .. please let me know if you are still confused on how to do this and i will get back to you on a more detailed guide. good luck

By: Ron

Ron — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:54:12 +0000

It will not work
If I run dellBiosUpdate -u -f ./bios.hdr
Error Msg:
Performing BIOS update…
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/sbin/dellBiosUpdate”, line 185, in
sys.exit( main() )
File “/usr/sbin/dellBiosUpdate”, line 153, in main
exit_code = updateBios(HdrFile(options.hdr), options)
File “”, line 3, in updateBios
File “/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/libsmbios_c/trace_decorator.py”, line 98, in trace
result = func(*args, **kw)
File “/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/libsmbios_c/rbu_update.py”, line 96, in updateBios
raise InappropriateHDRFile( _(“The system bios version (%s) is the same as or newer than the .HDR file (%s).”) % (ver, hdrfile.biosVersion()) )
libsmbios_c.rbu_update.InappropriateHDRFile: The system bios version (A12) is the same as or newer than the .HDR file (A05).
==========================================
If I run dellBiosUpdate –override_bios_version -u -f ./bios.hdr
Usage: smbios-rbu-bios-update

dellBiosUpdate: error: no such option: –override_bios_version

Somebody please help

By: CJ

CJ — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:14:26 +0000

Awesome! Thanks for this info…very very helpful and worked perfectly!

By: anon

anon — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 03:25:13 +0000

Thank you very much for this guide. It works nicely for Debian as well.

Much appreciated.

By: Upgrading Dell BIOS from Linux (Deb-based systems)

Upgrading Dell BIOS from Linux (Deb-based systems) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:16:09 +0000

[...] Downgrading Instructions: Thanks to Bobby for his comment about downgrading the BIOS which I must admit I hadn’t thought of. Here’s what he had to say about it – i had the problem and was shocked that the information on bios downgrade is quite miss in any case all you have to do is follow the step up to the last one then instead of sudo dellBiosUpdate -u -f bios.hdr it would be dellBiosUpdate –override_bios_version -u -f ./bios.hdr (presuming you have downloaded the bios.hdr you would like to downgrade to you can get more details here http://bigbrovar.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/upgrade-downgrade-your-dell-bios-on-ubuntu/ [...]