Upgrading firmware

  This page is monitored by the OLPC team.

  For the general public

Steps for Upgrading Firmware

G1G1 donors: You can install Update.1 also known as release 8.1.0, which includes a system firmware upgrade.

The following instructions are specifically for upgrades to new signed (official release) versions of the firmware distributed as .zip files. Development versions are provided as unsigned .rom files and need a developer key and a different upgrade process, as do firmware downgrades. Please refer to Manual Firmware Install for more details about the alternate methods.

ALL steps must be followed exactly.

1. Make sure your battery is charged.
2. Plug up the XO on external power.

   If you lose power during a firmware upgrade you will brick the laptop.

Using a USB flash drive and another computer

1. Right click and select "save as" on the following link:

   http://dev.laptop.org/pub/firmware/q2d14/bootfw.zip

2. Create a folder called "boot" on the flash drive
3. Copy the above .zip to the flash drive (do NOT unzip the file)
4. Remove the flash drive
5. Power off the XO, and ensure it is plugged in
6. Insert the flash drive
7. Power on the XO
8. It should indicate that it is rewriting the firmware

Using only your XO

1. Open the Terminal activity or a console
2. Type the following (press the Enter key after each line):

su -
wget http://dev.laptop.org/pub/firmware/q2d14/bootfw.zip
cp /home/olpc/bootfw.zip /versions/boot/current/boot/
reboot

3. The laptop will then reboot twice more on its own. (Once to enable writing to the flash and then a 2nd time after its done updating.)

The XO will only upgrade the system firmware if it finds that its current version is earlier than what is in bootfw.zip