[Discuss] Risks of BIOS (actually UEFI) updates

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2018-11-11 09:29-0800 Peter Willis wrote:

> Why not just back up your data and not worry about detecting old drives?
> Do a fresh install of Debian on your newly updated bios system.
>
> It may seem like a lot of work, but you’ve now gone 6 months with a failing system anyway.

What you suggest (use the Debian installer to sort out grub
inconsistency issues with an updated BIOS) must surely work if the
updated BIOS is valid.  And I know how to install to leave my user
files alone.  However, my system is filled with carefully selected
packages that I have installed over the last 6 months (with no
checksum errors) so I would prefer not to repeat that package
selection.  Thus, if I do attempt a reinstall to get rid of grub
inconsistencies with an updated BIOS I would also try to skip
everything else but grub to leave the non-grub part of my current
installation intact.  But from the reference I give below, I think I
can achieve grub consistency for my current system without having to
go to the installer at all.

I will answer the rest of your questions concerning my hardware on the
other thread.

Alan

>> On Nov 11, 2018, at 12:01 AM, Alan W. Irwin <Alan.W.Irwin1234 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 2018-11-10 23:32-0500 Daniel AJ Sokolov wrote:
>>
>>> A problem I have heard of is that a BIOS update somehow ruins GRUB or
>>> something like that.
>>>
>>> The machine will start, but it won't recognize your encrypted hard drive
>>> as a boot drive. I'm unaware of a fix.
>>
>> I don't use encrypted hard drives.  But just in case there are other
>> inconsistency troubles with an updated UEFI, it appears
>> <https://askubuntu.com/questions/831216/how-can-i-reinstall-grub-to-the-efi-partition>
>> is a pretty good reference for how to make grub consistent with your
>> UEFI.
>>
>> Alan
>
>
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__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
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