Tag Archives: Firmware

[Tutorial] How to create a bootable USB Drive to flash a Lenovo device's BIOS

This tutorial will review how to create a bootable USB drive to flash the fimrware/bios on your Lenovo device.

Before we begin, Lenovo offers three different downloads for Firmware today:

  1. Windows installer/flash utility (.exe)
  2. CD ISO version (.iso) to burn to a disk
  3. USB Flash Package (.zip)

While the USB Flash Package (.zip) is exactly what we are looking for, by default if you just drag the files onto your USB drive, it won't boot to the flash utility. In this case, the instructions below will show you have to make the drive bootable and then launch the USB Flash Package.

Make a bootable drive

First, you will want to download a copy of the Rufus utility. This utility is an open source utility for Windows only, but will allow you to make a bootable USB drive. You can obtain a copy of the utility here. Rufus' website can officially be found here: https://rufus.ie/

Once installed, open the application. Select your USB device you wish to flash (note this will erase all data on your device) and set the Boot selection to FreeDOS. Once your Device and Boot selection has been set, go ahead and click Start to flash the device.

You will be prompted to confirm you are OK with erasing the device. Go ahead and click OK if you are sure you have selected the correct device in the prior step.

Once completed, you should see a green bar that says READY. This is kinda misleading, wish it would say completed, but your device should be flashed at this point.

Download the right firmware from Lenovo

As mentioned earlier, Lenovo offers 3 different types of downloads on their website. You will want a copy of the zipped installer as shown in the screenshot below.

Once downloaded, navigate to where you downloaded the zipped file, right click, and select Extract All... If you don't see Extract All... then try downloading a copy of 7-Zip, which is a fantastic free archiver solution that can open all types of compressed files (zip, 7zip, tar.gz, etc)

In this picture, we show right clicking the zipped folder and clicking Extract All... on the file.
In this picture, we are selecting the folder to where the extracted files should go.

Copy the extracted files to your bootable USB drive

Once you have extracted the files from the zipped folder from Lenovo, you will want to copy and paste the files from the extracted directory to the bootable USB drive. To show visually, I opened two file explorer windows, one in the directory of the extracted firmware and the other on the bootable USB drive. I simply dragged and dropped the files from the firmware directory to the bootable USB drive.

When you try to copy the files from the firmware directory to the bootable USB drive, you will be prompted to replace AUTOEXEC.BAT. Make sure to Replace the file in the destination as this will execute the command to launch the flash2 utility, which actually writes the firmware to the device.

Plug in the drive and set the device to boot to it

At this point, you should have a bootable USB device that you can now plugin to your Lenovo device. You can unplug it from your client machine and plug it in to your Lenovo device. Make sure you set your Lenovo device to boot from the USB drive (this can usually be set by pressing the F1 or F2 keys during the post screen).

What to expect

Upon boot, you should be greeted by the Lenovo flash utility, which will ask if you want to update your device. Please note, that in my experience, once I select yes the device needed to reboot several times and may boot into the BIOS. The utility will tell you when everything is completed, so make sure you don't power down your device or unplug your USB drive after the first or second reboot, make sure you wait things out. As with updating any firmware, make sure you don't do this in a storm or on a device with low battery as you ensuring little chance of disruption as possible is absolutely critical.

Summary

At this point, you should have a bootable USB drive created by Rufus and FreeDOS that can be paired with Lenovo's firmware to go around and flash your devices. Hope this helps!

[Tutorial] Upgrading the firmware on a Cisco 5508 Wireless LAN Controller

This guide will show you what steps are needed to get your Cisco 5508 Wireless LAN Controller to the latest and greatest state.

  1. Download and install a TFTP Server program
    1. TFTPD is the recommend program to be used by Cisco.  It is a free and can be obtained from here: http://tftpd32.jounin.net/tftpd32_download.html
  2. Ensure your TFTP server instance is running and pointed to a directory of your choice.
    In this tutorial, I will be using C:\TFTP-Root as my directory for hosting firmware.
    Tftpd32
  3. Ensure you have an inbound firewall created to allow incoming connections to your machine on UDP port 69 if you will be using the TFTP option.
    UDP 69 - TFTP - Windows Firewall with Advanced Security
  4. Copy the firmware you want to transfer to the WLC to the TFTP server's directory
    TFTP-Server Firmware Directory
  5. Login to your Cisco WLC and select the Commands tab
    Cisco WLC 5508 - Commands Tab
  6. Ensure the following settings are entered and then click the Download button
    1. File Type: Code
      Transfer Mode: TFTP
      IP Address: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (IP Address to your machine)
      File Path: / (Use a relative file path; for example, if your firmware was located at c:\tftp-server\cisco5508\AIR-CT5500-K9-7-6-110-0.aes, use /cisco5508/)
      File Name: AIR-CT5500-K9-7-6-110-0.aes (or whatever your firmware is called)
      TFTP File transfer is successful
  7. Click OK when prompted to transfer the firmware
    Please confirm that you want to initiated the Code download process
  8. Once the firmware has finished updating, click on the Click Here link to reboot the WLC.
    TFTP File transfer is successful
  9. On the System Reboot page, hit the Save and Reboot button.
    Cisco WLC 5508 - Commands - Save and Reboot
  10. Click OK on the Configuration will be saved and the controller will be rebooted prompt.
    Configuration will be saved and the controller will be rebooted - Click ok to confirm
  11. Once the wireless LAN controller reboots, you should now be on the firmware version you provided.  You can verify on the Monitor page.
    Latest WLC firmware with outdated FUS
  12. At this point, you can can be done with your upgrade, however, it is highly recommended you also upgrade to the latest (or compatibile), version of the Field Upgrade Software (FUS) in additional to the WLC firmware (provided Cisco has a new version). The same steps to upgrade the FUS are of steps 6-10.
    1. Additional note, the FUS takes a considerable amount of time to upgrade the WLC.  It is normal for the FUS to take 30-50 minutes to upgrade after applying the firmware.  If you are not busy or intersted, you can watch the FUS upgrade various components if you console into the WLC during boot to keep an eye on things.
  13. Once the WLC and FUS firmware versions have been upgraded to their compatbile versions, you should be good to go! 🙂

Pushing firmware through CLI

If you wish to push the firmware manually via TFTP or FTP, you can use the following commands below (order doesn't matter as long as transfer download start is entered last).  The process is the same for uploading the firmware to the WLC, you only need to swap out the filename for either the FUS firmware or WLC firmware.

(Cisco Controller) > transfer download datatype code
(Cisco Controller) > transfer download mode tftp (can use ftp as well)
(Cisco Controller) > transfer download username user (only needed if using ftp)
(Cisco Controller) > transfer download password password (only needed if using ftp)
(Cisco Controller) > transfer download filename AIR-CT5500-K9-1-9-0-0-FUS.aes
(Cisco Controller) > transfer download path /
(Cisco Controller) > 
transfer download start


As of 4/14/2014, here are the latest firmware versions:

Release 1.9.0.0 for the Field Upgrade Software

Release 7.6.110.0ED for the Wireless LAN Controller


Notes: While upgrading our WLC from stock firmware, I received a strange error stating % Error: Code file transfer failed – Error while writing output file.  Please see my other blog post in regards to upgrading really old firmware on this device to the latest version: http://jackstromberg.com/2014/04/cisco-wlc-firmware-upgrade-error-code-file-transfer-failed-error-while-writing-output-file/

Cisco WLC Firmware Upgrade - % Error: Code file transfer failed - Error while writing output file

Symptom: When trying to upgrade your 5508 Wireless LAN Controller from an older firmware version (6.0.199.4 in my case), you receive the following error:

% Error: Code file transfer failed - Error while writing output fileError Code file transfer failed - Error while writing output file

Solution: When upgrading the firmware on the 5508, greater versions need to be applied incrementally.  Stock 5508 WLCs appear to be shipping with Software Version 6.0.199.4, the following firmware versions should be applied to reach the latest and greatest versions.

I applied the following upgrades to reach higher versions:

6.0.x  to 7.2.x ED

7.2.x ED to 7.x