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I have a Gigabyte 880GM-USB3 motherboard, purchased around 2015. In all these years there has been no BIOS update. I don't remember switching on any setting that would perform an auto-update of the BIOS either. Few days back I used Ubuntu's updater to update the software in Ubuntu. Yesterday, when I started the computer, I saw this:

enter image description here

Since a computer-savvy cousin had been to my room sometime back, I took some caution considering the "evil maid attack", and didn't update the BIOS. Also because Q-Flash recommends not updating. However, I selected the option to save BIOS to Drive.
On doing this, it prompted me for a name to give the saved file, and I named it "biosSometh".

On restarting the computer, I searched the filesystem for this file, but couldn't find it. I don't have Windows installed. It's only Ubuntu.

May I know where such a file typically gets saved? I need to wipe the disk and re-install the OS, so it'd be nice to retain a copy of this saved BIOS file.

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  • You have looked on the flash drive? Why don’t you just repeat your actions and save another copy?
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jan 23, 2022 at 5:34
  • Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.
    – Community Bot
    Commented Jan 23, 2022 at 5:34
  • @Ramhound: What flash drive? I have only one hard disk. I didn't use any extra pen drive during this process. What steps do I repeat? I just started my computer and this screen showed up. It has not showed up ever since. Even if I repeat the process, I still don't know where on the disk to find the saved file.
    – John David
    Commented Jan 23, 2022 at 6:00
  • You apply a firmware update by using a removable flash drive formatted properly. I took the “flash type” as a flash drive, and you specifically mentioned, your cousins drive. Download Q-Flash and repeat the process
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jan 23, 2022 at 7:32
  • There was no option to specify a directory to save the file to. It didn't even show me which directory it was going to be saved to. It only allowed me to enter a filename of my choice.
    – John David
    Commented Jan 26, 2022 at 15:08

1 Answer 1

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May I know where such a file typically gets saved?

Typically it would be to the root of the drive, which must be a FAT32/16/12 formatted filesystem according to the User Guide linked on their page:

Q-Flash only supports USB flash drive or hard drives using FAT32/16/12 file system.

If there was no FAT formatted drive attached, it wasn't saved anywhere.

EDIT: if the computer has an EFI partition (FAT32), it is probably saved there.

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  • Yes, there is a Fat32 partition as sda1, but how do I verify if the file is there? ls does not work. I'm trying to find a way to copy that file and keep it as a backup.
    – John David
    Commented Jan 26, 2022 at 15:09
  • @JohnDavid sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt then sudo find /mnt -type f -name biosSometh will locate the file (if it exists) and return the full path to it. If the location returned by find was /mnt/biosSometh then sudo cp /mnt/biosSometh ~/ will copy the file to your home directory. Note that the file copy will also be owned by root. Finally, do sudo umount /dev/sda1 to unmount the EFI partition.
    – fuzzydrawrings
    Commented Jan 27, 2022 at 2:01

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