Ubuntu – How to upgrade the BIOS in a HP ProBook 6560b via the HP_TOOLS partition

I recently discovered the there is a BIOS Update version F.28 available for my (work) notebook which is a HP ProBook 6560b booting with version F.20. I hope that this might fix the always-running fans in that machine.

The BIOS Update is available as a SoftPaq for download here:

• ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp59001-59500/sp59012.exe
• ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp59001-59500/sp59012.cva (text/ini file describing the contents)

According to the BIOS help I should find a BIN and a SIG file in there with the same name as the BIOS variant (which is 68SCE according to dmidecode). That one should be placed on the HP_TOOLS partition into the directory /Hewlett-Packard/BIOS/New and it can be upgraded through the BIOS (if a HpBiosUpdate.efi module exists in /Hewlett-Packard/BIOSUpdate). It looks like everything is prepared properly:

# mount /dev/disk/by-label/HP_TOOLS /mnt/
# ls -lR /mnt/Hewlett-Packard/BIOS*
/mnt/Hewlett-Packard/BIOS:
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 21  2011 Current
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 21  2011 New
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 21  2011 Previous

/mnt/Hewlett-Packard/BIOS/Current:
total 2564
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2621440 Dec 21  2011 68SCE.BIN
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root     256 Dec 21  2011 68SCE.SIG

/mnt/Hewlett-Packard/BIOS/New:
total 0

/mnt/Hewlett-Packard/BIOS/Previous:
total 0

/mnt/Hewlett-Packard/BIOSUpdate:
total 2112
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 259072 Aug 31  2010 CryptRSA32.efi
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 443904 Aug 31  2010 CryptRSA.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 706528 Mar 28  2011 HpBiosUpdate32.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    256 Mar 28  2011 HpBiosUpdate32.s09
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    256 Mar 28  2011 HpBiosUpdate32.sig
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 722848 Mar 28  2011 HpBiosUpdate.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root     51 Dec 21 23:59 HpBiosUpdate.log
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    256 Mar 28  2011 HpBiosUpdate.s09
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    256 Mar 28  2011 HpBiosUpdate.sig

Unfortunately are there no BIN and SIG files in the SoftPaq, only a CAB file which contains files which might be the correct ones but are just named Rom.*. There is also a ROM.CAB which contains some Rom-files as well:

# curl -O ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp59001-59500/sp59012.exe
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 22.0M  100 22.0M    0     0   529k      0  0:00:42  0:00:42 --:--:--  355k
# 7za x -osp59012 sp59012.exe 

7-Zip (A) [64] 9.20  Copyright (c) 1999-2010 Igor Pavlov  2010-11-18
p7zip Version 9.20 (locale=en_US.UTF-8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,4 CPUs)

Processing archive: sp59012.exe

Extracting  /68SCE.CAB
Extracting  /68SCF.CAB
Extracting  /hpqflash/hpqRun.exe
Extracting  /hpqflash/map.ini
Extracting  /hpqflash/SP59012_E.exe
Extracting  /hpqflash/SP59012_F.exe
Extracting  /HPQFlash.exe
Extracting  /hpqRun.exe
Extracting  /map.ini
Extracting  /ROM.CAB
Extracting  /WSSP59012.rtf

Everything is Ok

Files: 11
Size:       25651054
Compressed: 23089672
# find sp59012 -name '*.CAB' | xargs -I_ cabextract -d _.d _
Extracting cabinet: sp59012/ROM.CAB
  extracting sp59012/ROM.CAB.d/Rom.bin
  extracting sp59012/ROM.CAB.d/Rom.sig
  extracting sp59012/ROM.CAB.d/ver.txt
  extracting sp59012/ROM.CAB.d/ver.sig
  extracting sp59012/ROM.CAB.d/efibios.sig

All done, no errors.
Extracting cabinet: sp59012/68SCF.CAB
  extracting sp59012/68SCF.CAB.d/Rom.bin
  extracting sp59012/68SCF.CAB.d/Rom.sig
  extracting sp59012/68SCF.CAB.d/ver.txt
  extracting sp59012/68SCF.CAB.d/ver.sig
  extracting sp59012/68SCF.CAB.d/efibios.sig

All done, no errors.
Extracting cabinet: sp59012/68SCE.CAB
  extracting sp59012/68SCE.CAB.d/Rom.bin
  extracting sp59012/68SCE.CAB.d/Rom.sig
  extracting sp59012/68SCE.CAB.d/ver.txt
  extracting sp59012/68SCE.CAB.d/ver.sig
  extracting sp59012/68SCE.CAB.d/efibios.sig

All done, no errors.
# cat sp59012/map.ini 
[SYSTEM_ID]

1619=hpqflash.exe -s -a -f68SCE.CAB -phpqssm.bin
1618=hpqflash.exe -s -a -f68SCF.CAB -phpqssm.bin 
1621=hpqflash.exe -s -a -f68SCE.CAB -phpqssm.bin
161C=hpqflash.exe -s -a -f68SCF.CAB -phpqssm.bin
161D=hpqflash.exe -s -a -f68SCE.CAB -phpqssm.bin
1620=hpqflash.exe -s -a -f68SCF.CAB -phpqssm.bin
177C=hpqflash.exe -s -a -f68SCE.CAB -phpqssm.bin

The map.ini points to the 68SCE.CAB (1619 is the mainboard's Id according to dmidecode). I could try the files from that file. But I don't want to brick my notebook. Has anybody done this before successfully?