Random notes from a security-aware software engineer, open-source advocate and occasional lecturer.
This is an update to the [Lenovo Thinkpad BIOS Update With Linux]/(20171217-lenovo-thinkpad-t470s-bios-update) post since with the recent join of Lenovo to fwupd.org things have gotten a lot easier.
While the old method should still work, Lenovo made updates a lot easier when they joined fwupd.org which let’s you update your firmware directly from a Linux shell (or even a GUI). Unfortunately, this is not yet available for all Lenovo devices but most high-end ThinkPads are supported already and more devices will be added over time. For more details, including a list of supported devices, take a look at fwupd’s end user page but here is a quick guide:
Install fwupd (and its fwupdmgr tool). On Fedora, this would for example be:
% dnf install fwupd
Refresh firmware list:
% fwupdmgr refresh
List devices and available updates:
% fwupdmgr get-devices
% fwupdmgr get-topology
% fwupdmgr get-updates
Apply all updates (root privileges may be required):
% fwupdmgr update
That’s it!