question BIOS Update for Toshiba Satellite through Linux

[sedrosken]

How do I go about it? I have the BIOS updater launcher running in WINE, and it asks me to choose between three options:

1.) Make a bootable floppy (won't work, BIOS is too large to fit and the launcher bombs out when trying to find a specific executable)

2.) Make a bootable CD-ROM (won't work, no internal optical drive and have neither an external drive nor the money with which I would get one)

3.) Install the update directly from Windows (won't work for obvious reasons)

You'd think that by now Toshiba would make available tools with which one might be able to make a bootable flash drive with the BIOS update what with the dwindling number of machines sold with optical drives. I tried writing the iso that's in the directory to a flash drive and I am having absolutely no luck. Is there anything I can do short of reinstalling Windows? I need the BIOS updated so that my touchpad will hopefully work again. It works in the BIOS and is recognized by any OS I can throw on here, but it will not register any input from any OS. It works perfectly in the BIOS as previously stated, however.

 

[Chewy509]

Is there no option to install a BIOS update through the BIOS itself?

Re: touch pad. What model is being reported (dmesg output, or lsusb) and what driver is being installed by the kernel and XOrg?

Also, if you have the ISO, you may be able to modify the ISO to be USB bootable, or see here ( http://benobs.blogspot.fr/2012/04/toshiba-z835-p330-bios-update-from.html ) for a more manual approach.

Also... Have you read this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Flashing_BIOS_from_Linux

 

[Handruin]

You might be able to convert the CD-ROM ISO into a bootable USB stick and do it that way. You can't just copy the ISO file to the usb stick. The ISO is more of a complaint container. You need to read from it and copy the data structure to the usb stick. Maybe something like this guide might help?

 

[Mercutio]

Is there no option to install a BIOS update through the BIOS itself? [/url]

Even that can be a trick. I've run in to boards that won't update if the flash drive is over a certain size or pukes if the drive isn't formatted with exFAT.

 

[sedrosken]

You might be able to convert the CD-ROM ISO into a bootable USB stick and do it that way. You can't just copy the ISO file to the usb stick. The ISO is more of a complaint container. You need to read from it and copy the data structure to the usb stick. Maybe something like this guide might help?

Tried it. The ISO has a file in it called "Bootable_HardDisk.img" with a size of 512k, and nothing else even though the ISO is almost 30MB. No dice. My BIOS does NOT provide the option to upgrade from within itself.

Chewy: I did read that article. The flashrom utility will not work with my mainboard, and biosdisk won't work for the same reasons as making a floppy won't work.

As for my touchpad, which is a Synaptics model (not sure which specifically), this is the output of 'cat /proc/bus/input/devices' (lsusb gave nothing useful):

[sedrosken@manjaro-laptop-jst ~]$ cat /proc/bus/input/devices
I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0001 Product=0001 Version=ab41
N: Name="AT Translated Set 2 keyboard"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio0/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input0
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=sysrq kbd event0
B: PROP=0
B: EV=120013
B: KEY=402000000 3803078f800d001 feffffdfffefffff fffffffffffffffe
B: MSC=10
B: LED=7

I: Bus=0003 Vendor=046d Product=c018 Version=0111
N: Name="Logitech USB Optical Mouse"
P: Phys=usb-0000:00:14.0-2/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-2/1-2:1.0/0003:046D:C018.0001/input/input2
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=event1 mouse0
B: PROP=0
B: EV=17
B: KEY=70000 0 0 0 0
B: REL=103
B: MSC=10

I: Bus=0019 Vendor=0000 Product=0001 Version=0000
N: Name="Power Button"
P: Phys=PNP0C0C/button/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0C0C:00/input/input3
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=kbd event2
B: PROP=0
B: EV=3
B: KEY=10000000000000 0

I: Bus=0019 Vendor=0000 Product=0005 Version=0000
N: Name="Lid Switch"
P: Phys=PNP0C0D/button/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0C0D:00/input/input4
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=event3
B: PROP=0
B: EV=21
B: SW=1

I: Bus=0019 Vendor=0000 Product=0001 Version=0000
N: Name="Power Button"
P: Phys=LNXPWRBN/button/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXPWRBN:00/input/input5
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=kbd event4
B: PROP=0
B: EV=3
B: KEY=10000000000000 0

I: Bus=0019 Vendor=0000 Product=0000 Version=0000
N: Name="Toshiba input device"
P: Phys=toshiba_acpi/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/virtual/input/input6
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=kbd rfkill event5
B: PROP=0
B: EV=13
B: KEY=40000 10000 1c00000000 0 0 81501f00002000 3809604001 2000000000000 8000
B: MSC=10

I: Bus=0000 Vendor=0000 Product=0000 Version=0000
N: Name="HDA Intel PCH Headphone"
P: Phys=ALSA
S: Sysfs=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input8
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=event6
B: PROP=0
B: EV=21
B: SW=4

I: Bus=0000 Vendor=0000 Product=0000 Version=0000
N: Name="HDA Intel PCH HDMI/DP,pcm=3"
P: Phys=ALSA
S: Sysfs=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1b.0/sound/card0/input9
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=event7
B: PROP=0
B: EV=21
B: SW=140

I: Bus=0019 Vendor=0000 Product=0006 Version=0000
N: Name="Video Bus"
P: Phys=LNXVIDEO/video/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0A08:00/LNXVIDEO:00/input/input10
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=kbd event8
B: PROP=0
B: EV=3
B: KEY=3e000b00000000 0 0 0

I: Bus=0003 Vendor=04f2 Product=b446 Version=2708
N: Name="TOSHIBA Web Camera - HD"
P: Phys=usb-0000:00:14.0-3/button
S: Sysfs=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-3/1-3:1.0/input/input11
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=kbd event9
B: PROP=0
B: EV=3
B: KEY=100000 0 0 0

I: Bus=0011 Vendor=0002 Product=0007 Version=01b1
N: Name="SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"
P: Phys=isa0060/serio1/input0
S: Sysfs=/devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input7
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=event10 mouse1
B: PROP=9
B: EV=b
B: KEY=6420 30000 0 0 0 0
B: ABS=260800011000003

And here is the output from dmesg, cut down to size to show everything related to the touchpad:

[ 4.381035] psmouse serio1: synaptics: Touchpad model: 1, fw: 7.5, id: 0x1e0b1, caps: 0xf00173/0x240000/0xa2400, board id: 2978, fw id: 1621806
[ 4.381041] psmouse serio1: synaptics: Toshiba Satellite C55-B detected, limiting rate to 40pps.
[ 4.448863] input: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input7

On an unrelated note, thanks to the suggestion of using dmesg I now know why my bluetooth isn't working. It's missing a firmware patch file, oh joyous day.

 

[Chewy509]

Something to try for sh*t's and giggles... That 512K *.img file will most likely be an actual floppy disk image. If you open it up in a hex editor (ghex), look at offset 510. (0x1fe). It should be 0x55 0xAA (or 55 AA). And somewhere in that you should see stuff like "MSDOS" and "NO NAME" and most like "FAT12" in the first few 40 bytes as well... If so, then it's a bootable floppy disk image... You should even be able to mount it via the loop back interface.

If it is a floppy image, copy the file to your /boot folder, update the GRUB (I'm assuming your using GRUB to boot), and have GRUB load the image... (Here they do the same with FreeDOS, same concept: http://www.poweradded.net/2009/08/dos-boot-from-grub.html ). GRUB can load these sorts of images as part of the older chain-loading process used to dual boot WindowsXP (and older OSes).

As for the touchpad... Are there any errors in /var/log/Xorg.0.log ? (if running a recent Arch/Manjaro installation, then the log may be swallowed by systemd's logging facility, if so use "$ journalctl -e _COMM=Xorg " to access the log).

 

[sedrosken]

According to /var/log/Xorg.0.log, it's ignoring touch events. Why would it do that? In every single mouse control panel, it lists itself as enabled. Hmm...

Oh, and I misread the size of the IMG -- it's 512 bytes, not KB. I am using GRUB to boot.

 

[Chewy509]

According to /var/log/Xorg.0.log, it's ignoring touch events. Why would it do that? In every single mouse control panel, it lists itself as enabled. Hmm...

Something in the event handler configuration... See if

Option "TouchpadOff"

is listed in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf or /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf (you may have similar files in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ )

Also I assume you're using the xf86-input-synaptics driver and not the xf86-input-evdev driver for the touchpad? Also

$ synclient -l

should give you some more information.

Oh, and I misread the size of the IMG -- it's 512 bytes, not KB. I am using GRUB to boot.

Don't try what I suggested then. 512bytes is most like just the boot sector (or stub loader) and not the whole image.

Anyway, I downloaded the BIOS update image for your laptop, and the ISO appears to be malformed in regards to it's layout, so a lot of tools that can create USB bootable ISOs will fail. Any chance of getting a portable USB DVD burner (either purchase or loan for a day or two), and burning the ISO using 'cdrecord' or similar?

 

[sedrosken]

No such Option "TouchpadOff" entry can be found in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-synaptics.conf, and none of the other files exist.

Getting a loaner drive may or may not be an option sometime next week, but I'm banking on a 'no'.