Install “rpi-eeprom” (older versions of Raspberry Pi OS / Raspbian)
Newer versions of Raspberry Pi OS come with this utility already but if you are upgrading/have upgraded from an older version you may not have it in some cases. We can install it with the following commands:
sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade
sudo apt install rpi-eeprom
Once the utility is installed Raspberry Pi OS will check at boot whether there are any critical bootloader firmware updates for your Pi.
Checking for Updates Manually
If you are like me and don’t want to wait around for Raspberry Pi OS to decide whether do these updates there is a command to check for updates manually:
sudo rpi-eeprom-update
You will see output like this if there is no update available:
BOOTLOADER: up to date
CURRENT: Thu 10 Mar 11:57:12 UTC 2022 (1646913432)
LATEST: Thu 10 Mar 11:57:12 UTC 2022 (1646913432)
RELEASE: stable (/lib/firmware/raspberrypi/bootloader/stable)
Use raspi-config to change the release.
VL805_FW: Using bootloader EEPROM
VL805: up to date
CURRENT: 000138a1
LATEST: 000138a1
If the firmware isn’t up to date it will indicate an update is required like this:
*** UPDATE AVAILABLE ***
BOOTLOADER: update available
CURRENT: Thu 10 Mar 11:57:12 UTC 2022 (1646913432)
LATEST: Tue 26 Apr 10:24:28 UTC 2022 (1650968668)
RELEASE: stable (/lib/firmware/raspberrypi/bootloader/stable)
Use raspi-config to change the release.
VL805_FW: Using bootloader EEPROM
VL805: up to date
CURRENT: 000138a1
LATEST: 000138a1
We now can see that there is updated firmware for our device. To install this update we will use the -a switch as well as the -d switch (which means to check the bootloader):
sudo rpi-eeprom-update -d -a
If there were updates available your output should look like this:
*** INSTALLING EEPROM UPDATES ***
BOOTLOADER: update available
CURRENT: Thu 10 Mar 11:57:12 UTC 2022 (1646913432)
LATEST: Tue 26 Apr 10:24:28 UTC 2022 (1650968668)
RELEASE: stable (/lib/firmware/raspberrypi/bootloader/stable)
Use raspi-config to change the release.
VL805_FW: Using bootloader EEPROM
VL805: up to date
CURRENT: 000138a1
LATEST: 000138a1
CURRENT: Thu 10 Mar 11:57:12 UTC 2022 (1646913432)
UPDATE: Tue 26 Apr 10:24:28 UTC 2022 (1650968668)
BOOTFS: /boot
EEPROM updates pending. Please reboot to apply the update.
To cancel a pending update run "sudo rpi-eeprom-update -r".
Now reboot the Raspberry PI and confirm that all is up to date.
sudo reboot
sudo rpi-eeprom-update