The other day I wondered how I could potentially upgrade my motherboard’s firmware. It’s an old GA-8IRX and works quite well. Though I did come across some strange system freezes on rare occasions. Now I looked up the firmware for the board and this (or something similar) is fixed in the newest release and I wondered how I could possibly update my firmware directly from Linux with only a .exe file given.
I send an email to the Gigabyte support and apart from the whole sucking of their oh so great support process, they simply don’t care about me:
My Email
I’m a Linux user and wonder what your proposed way to upgrade my motherboard bios / firmware is.
Can I use something like FreeDos? Or is Windows (which I do not have!) necessary?
It’s a shame that you neglect Linux here. Also it’s very bad that there is nothing to be read about this issue on your website.
Their Answer (English translation, they answered in German)
Dear Mr Wolff,
thank you for your request We appreciate your interest in GIGABYTE products.
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I had the job to erase the HDDs of our oldest computer (100Mhz with Win 95). Since a villain could hypothetically get the data even if you do a format C: I searched the web for help. Eventually I came across dban which is just what I was looking for:
- small: dban fits on one floppy
- free: it’s open source!
- sophisticated wiping mechanisms
How to create a dban boot floppy on linux
- Download dban, pick the
*.exe file - Unzip the downloaded file:
unzip dban-1.0.7_i386.exe - Get a floppy, optionally format it and put dban on it:
mount /dev/fd0 && dd if=dban-1.0.7_i386.ima of=/dev/fd0 bs=1024 && umount /dev/fd0 - Done
Now put the floppy in the target pc and boot it up. Make sure (via your BIOS) that a floppy has the highest boot priority. You should be welcomed by a screen with a warning, saying dban is dangerous, ‘cause it will wipe all your data. That’s just what I’m looking for - thanks!
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After the scrolling wheel of my old Typhoon mouse went crazy (I think because of a loose contact) I bought a Logitech MX1000. A very nice mouse with superior surface detection which made a mouse pad unnecessary for me. If you’re in my position you have a mouse with tons of buttons and want to use them all. This is how I did it:
Programs
You’ll need the following programs:
- xbindkeys: for remaping button events
- xvkbd: used to send specific keyboard events
- xmacro: used to send specific mouse events
- kompose: a program for the “Application-Switch” button
- lmctl: for disabling cruise control Download and install those programs, Ubuntu users will find most of them in the repositories.
Xorg.conf
Follow the instructions of this wiki article, it worked like a charm for me. If you have done what stands there, logout of KDE / Gnome and restart X to see if it works.
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