Netgate BIOS update on SG-4860 and flashrom: 0.9.9

goulou

In trying to update my SG-4860 per the recent email I got urging me to do so, I think I took a wrong turn…

For remote update...

-Putty SSH and logged in as root
-Went here for instructions to update BIOS:
https://www.netgate.com/docs/sg-4860/adi-bios-flash.html#remote-update and followed this:

Note: This only works with systems running pfSense version 2.3 or greater. (And yes, I'm good up to here)

SSH into the system

Run the following commands:

pkg install flashrom

and got this before I could run the second cmd which would have been:
fetch https://firmware.netgate.com/bios/bios12-flash-rccve.tar.gz -o /tmp/bios.rom.tar.gz

What I got instead was…

*** Welcome to pfSense 2.3.3-RELEASE-p1 (amd64 full-install) on ***

WAN (wan) -> igb1 -> v4/DHCP4:
LAN (lan) -> igb0 -> v4:
OPT1 (opt1) -> igb2 ->
OPT2 (opt2) -> igb3 ->
OPT3 (opt3) -> igb4 ->
OPT4 (opt4) -> igb5 ->

Logout (SSH only) 9) pfTop
Assign Interfaces 10) Filter Logs
Set interface(s) IP address 11) Restart webConfigurator
Reset webConfigurator password 12) PHP shell + pfSense tools
Reset to factory defaults 13) Update from console
Reboot system 14) Disable Secure Shell (sshd)
Halt system 15) Restore recent configuration
Ping host 16) Restart PHP-FPM
8 ) Shell

So I entered option 8 (Shell) and then the first cmd: "pkg install flashrom" which gave me this:

[2.3.3-RELEASE][xyzpdq@blahblah]/root: pkg install flashrom

Updating pfSense-core repository catalogue…
pfSense-core repository is up-to-date.
Updating pfSense repository catalogue...
pfSense repository is up-to-date.
All repositories are up-to-date.
The following 3 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

New packages to be INSTALLED:
flashrom: 0.9.9 [pfSense]
libpci: 3.5.2 [pfSense]
pciids: 20170101 [pfSense]

Number of packages to be installed: 3

The process will require 2 MiB more space.
375 KiB to be downloaded.

Proceed with this action? [y/N]: N

So the first question is what is flashrom 0.0.9 and how does that compare to Netgate bios update I'm trying to run? Second question is if Option 8 (Shell) is wrong, can the Netgate bios update commands be run from the cmd line gui in pfSense? I suppose I could take the manual update route but there was no separate checksum to compare to even after decompression of the .tar.gz Since I'm not having much luck with the provided instructions, any is help appreciated!

jimp

flashrom is a utility used to update the BIOS.

The commands are meant to be run from the shell (menu option 8) and won't work properly from the GUI command line.

If you are unusure about the update, wait a few days, we have a BIOS update package coming shortly that will handle the update for you.

goulou

Thanks jimp, happy to wait for the BIOS update package. Will that be found under available packages, once its ready?

jimp

Yes, and it's up now.

goulou

Thank you. Installed the package and completed the BIOS update in less than a minute!

Updating flashing …
SN: ######
Serial Number Read from Flash #####
Done. Please power cycle the board if the flash has been updated

ADI_RCCVE-01.00.00.12-nodebug

seanmcb

Where is this package? Should it be in "System > Package Manager > Available Packages"? I search for "BIOS" on that page but find nothing…

seanmcb

Nevermind :) found it discussed in another thread. It's called "Netgate_Coreboot_Upgrade".