fedora equivalent of recovery disk

[Paul Allen Newell]

On 12/17/2011 8:42 PM, g wrote:
> ok, to deal with bios upgrade.
>
> does you bios boot show screens or a graphic banner?
>
> does bios have ability to show 'detail' screens during boot?
>
> if so, boot in that mode to see what is there. some will give an option
> of 'other' or something to that effect.
>
> also, during detail boot, watch to see who wrote bios, and note the
> number and year. you may need to go to them for new bios if new hp bios
> does not have usb boot option.
>
> hp may not note that later bios has usb boot, but if you pull latest for
> your system, and install it, you may find usb is there.
>
>

g:

Wanted to get back on this while mulling / understanding the rest.

Its an HP bios that has that pseudo-gui with the limited use of the 
arrow keys, return, f-keys, and esc. I went through every page looking 
for anything that looked remotely usable as a solution. I didn't see 
anything for showing detail during the boot (though I may not be 
understanding what you mean by "detail"). Definitely no "other", its 
just cd/dvd or hard drive as boot options. I got the date and revision 
number of what I have and compared it against HP release notes for bios 
updates. It looks like Phoenix who I have seen on a number of different 
HP machine's bioses (? is there a plural of bios ?).

My fear is that I can't afford to screw up a bios update on this 
machine. I've done one on another machine and it worked, but I was able 
to leverage HP support when I did that. That being said, I have pulled 
up the Phoenix related website and there may be info there (alot to dig 
through). If I knew it had a boot-from-USB update, I'd consider doing 
it. I'm just not ready to gamble on screwing up or getting a new problem 
until I have the original issue resolved. You are allowed to assume that 
you are hearing the sounds of chickens clucking on my end as you read this.

Thanks for your patience and continued help ... especially when I 
admitted that I might be considering cutting my losses on this issue.

Paul