[ltp] Upgrading the BIOS of my X201s

[Yves-Alexis Perez]

On lun., 2011-05-30 at 13:54 -0300, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> Has someone managed to upgrade the BIOS of his X2xx thinkpad without
> installing Windows?  My attempts at extracting the files and making
> a bootable USB key for them have all failed, and given the lack of an
> optical drive, the "bootable CD" (which worked great for my T60) seems
> not to be an option. 

I managed to flash the bios of my T61 using an usb key using the method
described there
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/BIOS_Upgrade/X_Series#Approach_10A:_Booting_an_ISO_image_using_Grub_and_Syslinux_for_X61

and it uses an iso from X201 so I guess it should be possible to go the
standard way for the X201s.

Basically what I'd do:

* grab the iso
* grab a fresh usb key, add a new linux partition, make it
bootable/active, format it as ext2
* mount it in /media/bios
* mkdir /media/bios/extlinux
* extlinux -i /media/bios/extlinux
* mv x201s.iso /media/bios/

Then edit /media/bios/extlinux/extlinux.conf and use something like:

label bios
  linux memdisk
  append iso
  initrd /x201s.iso

then boot using that key, at the prompt type bios and it should work
(tm).

If it doesn't, please send me your x201s so I can fix my procedure :)

Regards,
-- 
Yves-Alexis