Can BIOS upgrade damage something?

[Stuart_Hayes at Dell.com]

I believe if you get a power failure during a BIOS upgrade, your system
won't be physically damaged, but your system probably won't be able to
boot up when it powers back on, because the code that is run when the
system powers on is in the flash part, and that code will be corrupt.
You'd need special equipment to reflash the BIOS if that happens.

If you have a nuclear explosion during an upgrade there might be other
problems, too.

As I recall, in older systems, flash parts had a "boot sector"--part of
the flash chip that did not get upgraded, and this code would check the
integrity of the code in rest of the flash before jumping to it.  If it
was bad, the boot sector code was able to read a new image (like, from a
floppy) and reflash.

I don't think the newer systems have anything like that, but I'm not
sure.

Stuart


-----Original Message-----
From: linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com
[mailto:linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com] On Behalf Of michalwd1979
Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2008 1:06 PM
To: linux-poweredge-Lists
Subject: Can BIOS upgrade damage something?

Hello,
While I never had a situation when BIOS upgrade went wrong I am
wondering if it can damage something. For example I have a power
failure/storm/nuclear explosion during upgrade and the server has been
rebooted in the middle of writing new image to flash. Does anyone know
what would happen then? 
Or maybe someone has already experienced such situation?
My system is PE2850 with gentoo linux and A07 Bios.

Thanks in advance
Michael W.

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