Easy firmware updating tool from Hexxeh

10th of May 2012 by liz

Hexxeh has been hard at work doing development with his Raspberry Pi, and has had to reinstall the firmware onto a blank image quite frequently. So he’s written a tool to do it for him; and it’ll work for you too. If you’re not a developer, his rpi-updater is still something you might want to download, just in order to make sure you always have the latest firmware and kernel version for your Raspberry Pi.

Head over to Hexxeh’s blog for a download link and instructions.

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37 comments

Ypnose on
May 10, 2012 at 7:36 pm said:

Do we have to upgrade this firmware? It’s really needed by the Raspberry?

Comment ↓
- JamesH on
  May 10, 2012 at 8:08 pm said:
  
  If yours is working fine, then you don;t need it. However as time goes by fixes/improvements are made to the code, and eventually, you will either need to reimage your SD card with the latest and greatest from the downloads page. Or you could get just the firmware a bit earlier by using this. Like I said, if all is working fine, don’t worry about it, and just wait until the next full image is released which will contain all the latest firmware anyway.
  
  Comment ↓
  - Guilherme de Sousa on
    May 11, 2012 at 12:21 pm said:
    
    ArchLinux has rolling release cycle. Do we also have to worry about this in arch?
    
    Comment ↓
  - Tomas on
    May 11, 2012 at 3:13 pm said:
    
    I have the same question. Shouldn’t we Archers automatically have the latest firmware buy just doing a pacman -Syu?
    
    Comment ↓
    - JamesH on
      May 11, 2012 at 4:04 pm said:
      
      No. That updates all your Linux stuff, not the GPU blob or the boot firmware.
      
      Comment ↓
EarthlyPangaea on
May 10, 2012 at 7:49 pm said:

How could I make a backup of my current SD card image just in case rpi-updater breaks it?

Comment ↓
- stevepdp on
  May 10, 2012 at 10:14 pm said:
  
  On a typical Linux system, you could use the command “dd” to back up the device. I understand that dd has been ported to Windows and should be available on Mac devices out of the box too.
  
  Look up “how to back up with dd” in your favourite search engine. You’ll find loads of tutorials out there that cover how to do it.
  
  Comment ↓
  - EarthlyPangaea on
    May 10, 2012 at 11:13 pm said:
    
    Thanks, I got my SD card backed up to my Lubuntu netbook in the end.
    
    Comment ↓
zag on
May 10, 2012 at 7:59 pm said:

I’m also a bit confused…

Raspberry PI firmware is different to the OS?

Comment ↓
- JamesH on
  May 10, 2012 at 8:06 pm said:
  
  Yes. The firmware is the code that starts up the device, and is loaded on to the GPU to make it work. It then hands control to the OS. A bit like the BIOS on a desktop.
  
  Comment ↓
  - Lobster on
    May 11, 2012 at 12:06 am said:
    
    Is this firmware code included in a Qemu running image?
    
    Comment ↓
    - JamesH on
      May 11, 2012 at 9:00 am said:
      
      You don’t need the firmware if using QEMU. AFAIK!
      
      Comment ↓
  - Kris Chaplin on
    May 11, 2012 at 10:44 am said:
    
    Just to clarify. Is the firmware something that stays stored on the SD card, or is it something that ends up in non-volatile storage on the Pi itself. I guess my main question is:
    If I update the firmware, is it only for the current SD card image, or does it affect my pi, and any card placed into it?
    
    Thanks
    Kris
    
    Comment ↓
    - Hexxeh on
      May 11, 2012 at 2:53 pm said:
      
      It only affects the SD card you run it with, since the firmware is stored on the SD card.
      
      Comment ↓
      - Kris Chaplin on
        May 11, 2012 at 4:02 pm said:
        
        Thanks, so at the end of the day, we’re not going to irrevokably break something here, that could not be fixed with a reimage of the SD card. I’m comfortable with that – thanks.
Ben on
May 10, 2012 at 8:17 pm said:

Thanks – looks nice! Am I right in thinking the Chromium OS builds are http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/ – or are they X86 only?

Comment ↓
- Abhi on
  May 10, 2012 at 8:56 pm said:
  
  Those builds are only for x86. He distributes pre-build images of ChromeOS. Though, I was also wondering if he plans for R-pi build/port.
  
  Comment ↓
stevepdp on
May 10, 2012 at 10:07 pm said:

Thanks for the update Liz, and thanks Hexxeh for all your efforts.

I updated yesterday and it solved the problem which prevented me from being able to use my collection of Sandisk 8GB class 6 cards (B11201421964G). Quite an upgrade from the class 2 “Wii” branded card I had been using

Comment ↓
JonB on
May 11, 2012 at 8:44 am said:

Still waiting for my Pi but I had a look at the code. Very nice coding style. One thing to note is it will pull the update from Hexxeh’s own git repo (and it is hardcoded) – is this going to be the official source of updates, or does the Foundation plan on setting one up?

Comment ↓
Grumpyoldgit on
May 11, 2012 at 9:31 am said:

Are you really sure that this should be on the front page? There is already a plea from Gert to try and separate out the absolute beginners from intermediate and perhaps have an advanced. There is already a posting from a chap who can’t get his Pi to boot but wants to upgrade the firmware. Is it possible to clarify whether updating the firmware is something people should have a go at or really should be filed under Advanced? I notice that there is a disclaimer that the updater is experimental and could break your image.

Comment ↓
- Grumpyoldgit on
  May 11, 2012 at 9:32 am said:
  
  Sorry. Didn’t recheck before posting. Too many alreadys!
  
  Comment ↓
  - Liam McLoughlin on
    May 11, 2012 at 12:59 pm said:
    
    You can’t damage your Pi by updating the firmware, at worst, you might make it so your SD card doesn’t boot and needs to be reflashed.
    
    Comment ↓
SonicBroom on
May 11, 2012 at 9:39 am said:

Sweet. I’m going to try this tonight, i’m hoping new firmware will resolve some SD card issues i’m having. My 4 gig card works fine but I have a nice fast 16gig sandisk sd card which only boots half way on the Rpi. Fingers crossed! Thanks.

Comment ↓
Grumpyoldgit on
May 11, 2012 at 9:49 am said:

Ahh. I see there are comments on here about the firmware resolving card issues. If a card won’t work in the Pi how would you get the new firmware on it. A sort of Catch 22!

Comment ↓
- Grumpyoldgit on
  May 11, 2012 at 9:53 am said:
  
  Trying to resolve my own question. If the person with the problem gets a working SD card, images that, updates the firmware, copies image back to hard drive, then images suspect card, would that potentially work, or is there a simpler way?
  
  Comment ↓
  - SonicBroom on
    May 11, 2012 at 11:01 am said:
    
    Yes i imagine this would be a 2 card job. Use a working SD card and perform the update. Then backup that image (somehow, a bit of trial and error no doubt haha) and then transfer the backup image to the better (but troublesome) SD card.
    
    Does anyone else have some suggestions?
    
    Comment ↓
    - Grumpyoldgit on
      May 11, 2012 at 11:09 am said:
      
      I thought that was what I just said?
      
      Comment ↓
- AndrewS on
  May 27, 2012 at 12:16 pm said:
  
  I don’t expect anyone to see this reply but just for the record rpi-update now includes an “offline” mode I added to side-step this Catch-22 situation
  
  Comment ↓
Stan Chelchowski on
May 11, 2012 at 2:09 pm said:

I am not sure whether I am a beginnner or intermediate but I experienced mass-panic when I couldn’t log in to my nice new Pi……..
First education lesson provided by my Pi – there is a “P” in the password raspberry!!!
- Doh!!!

Comment ↓
- Grumpyoldgit on
  May 11, 2012 at 2:56 pm said:
  
  Can I have a P, Bob?
  
  Comment ↓
Joe on
May 12, 2012 at 3:13 am said:

Off topic, but what happened to the Fedora Remix?

Comment ↓
Neil on
May 14, 2012 at 10:03 pm said:

I was typing in the long command line and instead of typing in the short url http://goo.gl/1BOfJ which leads to
https://raw.github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update/master/rpi-update

I typed in a 0 instead of a O which leads to
[Liz edit - something else entirely NSFW]

maybe the zero should be replaced with a 8 and is the 1B0fJ case sensitive?

Comment ↓
JanS on
July 13, 2012 at 12:20 am said:

Hello
Today I tried to update firmware in my Pi, but I received the response:
Bash: /usr/bin/rpi-update: Permission denied
I have already adjusted correct time and actual certificates.
Do you have some idea what I did bad?
Thanks

Comment ↓
- ukscone on
  July 13, 2012 at 3:38 am said:
  
  you’ll need to do chmod 777 rpi-update to make it excutable
  
  Comment ↓
Clive Cooper on
July 16, 2012 at 6:24 pm said:

Used the updater on my ArchlinuxArm RPi install and all went well with no errors at all.

Comment ↓
jmzc on
December 13, 2012 at 2:47 pm said:

Good tool.

Where I can see how booting works ? I always thought that firmware was store into ROM on motherboard, but about previous comments , firmware is stored into SD card.
And this firmware is code to make work GPU

How I can know how all these parts works together ?

Thanks

Comment ↓
- JamesH on
  December 13, 2012 at 2:50 pm said:
  
  Please read the Wiki, all the information is one there.
  
  Comment ↓

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