Bios update

This is maybe not the best thing to do first, but i want to try.
WARNING these instructions may break your computer, if you don't know what you doing. Use it on your own risk.
Biosdisk exists for a long time, it is very simple tool, you can make floppy image with it, boot it from grub and update bios from freedos with out problems, but i want to try new methods.
First thing im trying is flashrom from Coreboot project, OpenSUSE bring it in main oss repository, simply run sudo zypper in coreboot-utils and it is ready, then run sudo flashrom for me output:

Calibrating delay loop... OK.
No coreboot table found.
Found chipset "Intel ICH8M-E", enabling flash write... OK.
Found chip "Macronix MX25L1605" (2048 KB) at physical address 0xffe00000.
===
This flash part has status UNTESTED for operations: PROBE READ ERASE WRITE
Please email a report to flashrom@coreboot.org if any of the above operations
work correctly for you with this flash part. Please include the full output
from the program, including chipset found. Thank you for your help!
===
No operations were specified.

It is very difficult to extract flash part from laptop, if you break bios, it is soldered to motherboard.
This idea have stopped me from immediate testing of flashrom functionality.
Next thing i found is smbios, also from Dell site. Add dell repository like this:
sudo zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/isv:/dell:/community/suse11.1-x86_64/ dell
after that install packages of libsmbios and firmware tools:
sudo zypper in firmware-tools firmware-extract libsmbios2 smbios-utils smbios-utils-bin smbios-utils-python
Now i can get info about bios and some tools for extracting hdr file from win32 binary and install it.
sudo firmwaretool --bootstrap
reports system id, for Dell xps m1730 it is ven_0x1028_dev_0x01f7.
Dell maintaining rpm's with their hdr bios files here, no need to download win32 binary and extract hdr.
Install rpm with system id like this:
wget http://linux.dell.com/repo/firmware/cross-distro/RPMS/noarch/system_bios_ven_0x1028_dev_0x01f7-a10-20.noarch.rpm
then
sudo rpm -ivh system_bios_ven_0x1028_dev_0x01f7-a10-20.noarch.rpm
and now
sudo update_firmware

new bios version found and ready to install with --yes key.
You still need to reboot to complete installation. Flashing will appear at post.

OpenSUSE 11.1 x86_64 installation to Dell XPS m1730 laptop.

After playing some time with forced windows vista on my new dell m1730 i decided to install Opensuse 11.1 x86_64 on it. All my other pc's running under Opensuse, so hosting new 11.1 version on server as nfs share and pxe boot option is reasonable choice, it is internet traffic and blank dvd saving method. So here is some tips how i did it for my own memory and maybe they will help some one else.

First of all you need to download 11.1 version dvd iso, best place to download it for sure from Opensuse home download page.

Store image to server and mount iso image in /etc/fstab, like this:
/usr/src/dist/openSUSE-11.1-DVD-x86_64-iso/openSUSE-11.1-DVD-x86_64.iso /mnt/opensuse-11.1-x86_64 iso9660 ro,loop 0 0
then mount whole fstab with sudo mount -a command.

After image is mounted to some directory we need to offer it as nfs share, for that add it to /etc/exports file, like this:
/mnt/opensuse-11.1-x86_64 *(ro,root_squash,sync,no_subtree_check)
don't forget to enable nfs server with yast or manually.

Now it is time to setup pxe enviroment, first enable it in dhcp, in my case dhcpd running on Linksys WRT54G router with OpenWRT system, add --dhcpboot=net:lan,pxelinux.0,servername,serverip to dnsmasq startup script.

To enable tftp and pxe on Opensuse server install tftp server and pxe environment, like this:
sudo zypper in atftp pxe
This will add atftpd server to system and pxe environment to default location /srv/tftpboot/.
Copy initrd,linux and message files from mounted Opensuse 11.1 boot/x86_64/loader/ to some directory in tftp root, i made /srv/tftpboot/image/os11.1-x86_64 for that.
Then edit /srv/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default like this:
LABEL opensuse64
MENU LABEL ^openSuSE 11.1 x86 64
kernel image/os11.1-x86_64/linux
append initrd=image/os11.1-x86_64/initrd ramdisk_size=65536 vga=0x314 insmod=sky2 install=nfs://serverip/mnt/opensuse-11.1-x86_64/


Now start atftpd server and you are ready to boot into pxe Opensuse installation.
On Dell m1730 you can choose network boot option at laptop post with F12 key.
My network boot to pxe went with out any problems, i have reached Opensuse graphical installation and chosen to create new GPT partition table for fresh system install...