Firmware Updates LiveCD thanks to Revisor

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One of the coolest tools to come out of the Fedora Project is Revisor,
which makes it blindingly simple to create your own custom Linux
distribution, where you get to choose the packages you wish to include.
This week I've been playing with Revisor to generate a Dell Firmware Updates
LiveCD. Most of the components necessary for this are already included
in Fedora: the firmware-tools framework,
firmware-addon-dell Dell-specific flash tools, libsmbios utilities, and
the dell_rbu kernel module (in upstream). To these we add the
system_bios* and pci_firmware* packages from the Dell firmware repository,
that contains the actual BIOS and firmware images in convenient RPMs.
The result is a bootable LiveCD that lets you log in and run
'update_firmware' to flash your system to the latest BIOS on 282 Dell
system types.

Instructions for building your own firmware LiveCD are posted at
http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Tech/libsmbios_livecd.

About the Author: Matt Domsch

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