huawei-efi-updater

Allows updating UEFI firmware without HUAWEI PC Manager or Windows.

Updating firmware with Linux

1. Copy the UEFI capsule file (UEFI_FW.cap) to the InsydeH2O specific location (/boot/efi/EFI/UpdateCapsule/CapsuleUpdateFile0000.bin).

2. Set OsIndications variable to firmware update mode:

   printf "\x07\x00\x00\x00\x04\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00" \
     > /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/OsIndications-8be4df61-93ca-11d2-aa0d-00e098032b8c

3. Reboot

Updating firmware without OS

There are two ways to update without an OS:

• Via HUAWEI CapAgent. This method works with all firmware versions. The trick is apparently a boot option to a special file.
• Via EDK II CapsuleApp. This method works only on old firmware versions (e.g. 1.06) and will return EFI_UNSUPPORTED on new firmware.

After choosing the method proceed with the following steps and the contents of CapAgent or CapsuleApp directory:

1. Create a FAT32 formatted USB flash drive.
2. Copy EFI directory for the correct model to the USB drive root.
3. Disable UEFI Secure Boot in BIOS settings.
4. Boot from the USB flash drive.
5. Wait for timeout to expire for startup.nsh to run.
6. The system will reboot to install the update.
7. Enable UEFI Secure Boot in BIOS settings.

Note: CapAgent.efi is signed and can be launched without disabling UEFI Secure Boot, if one creates a dedicated boot option from the operating system.

Generating capsule

UEFI firmware update can be found on Microsoft Update. It needs to be prepended with a standard 28-byte capsule header (EFI_CAPSULE_HEADER).

• CapsuleGuid — from ESRT FirmwareClass (see /sys/firmware/efi/esrt/entries on Linux):
  • 1 for UEFI firmware
  • 2 for ME firmware
• HeaderSize — 28 bytes.
• Flags — CAPSULE_FLAGS_PERSIST_ACROSS_RESET (0x10000).
• CapsuleImageSize — firmware size + 28 bytes.