Safe to update Firmware?

Retro Arcade Fan

Hey everyone,

I noticed there was an update available for my RP4 firmware, but as someone who's always worried about damaging their arcade, I wanted to ask if it's routinely safe to update the firmware? I backup my arcade monthly. So it's not detrimental if the image breaks. But the firmware is built into the RP4 directly, so I hesitate. Because if something goes wrong, I can't replace it due to the shortages.

Again, me just worrying about my baby. I know I can update the firmware by itself. Is it generally safe to update the firmware when updates are available?

As always, thank you for your support.

Ashpool

@Retro-Arcade-Fan said in Safe to update Firmware?:

But the firmware is built into the RP4 directly, so I hesitate.

Sure of that? As the raspberry pi doc is saying this about the firmware:

The kernel and firmware are installed as a Debian package, and so will also get updates when using the procedure above. These packages are updated infrequently and after extensive testing.

It is the bootloader that is written to a prom and there seem to be a safeguard mechanism implemented (cited from here):

At power on, the BCM2711 ROM looks for a file called recovery.bin in the root directory of the boot partition on the SD card. If a valid recovery.bin is found then the ROM executes this instead of the contents of the EEPROM. This mechanism ensures that the bootloader EEPROM can always be reset to a valid image with factory default settings.

Retro Arcade Fan

@Ashpool So you're saying it's safe to update whenever there's one available.

Ashpool

@Retro-Arcade-Fan As long as it is done via

> sudo apt update
> sudo apt full-upgrade

it should be safe (or at least safe as all write processes to the system storage device (sd card/hdd/sdd/etc.) are) and don't use rpi-update (IIRC some Blogs/Websides/SearchResults may tell you otherwise, but according to the official docs there is just one case an end-user may use that: You should not use rpi-update on any system unless recommended to do so by a Raspberry Pi engineer.)

Retro Arcade Fan

@Ashpool said in Safe to update Firmware?:

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade

Does this update all of the emulators too? I can't remember what "update" did once but it updated all of my emulators and totally destroyed my build. ALL I want to update is the firmware at this point.

Ashpool

@Retro-Arcade-Fan It will upgrade all packages that are visible to the OS packet manager(s)[1], if that includes emulators they will also be updated - but that is a question best be answered by people with more insight/knowledge of the retropie-setup script.

[At least on the Pi4 where I have RetroPie installed on top of the legacy Raspberry OS I haven't encountered anything like broken emulators after a full-upgrade, but i am only using a limited set of games/emulators on that machine]

1: like apt, apt-get, aptitude ...