Trouble updating BIOS on a PowerEdge SC1420

[Matt Domsch]

> On 10/4/06, Matt Domsch <Matt_Domsch at dell.com> wrote:
On Wed, Oct 04, 2006 at 11:22:10AM -0700, Chad Scott wrote:
> > By chance are you doing something that can cause the dell_rbu driver
> > to be unloaded from memory before rebooting?  A straight 'init 6'
> > shouldn't rmmod dell_rbu, but if that driver is getting unloaded, that
> > would explain both messages (not found and/or failed checks).
> I'm just doing an 'init 6' and letting the system shut-down and reboot normally.
> 
> I thought of this possibility, so I manually loaded the dell_rbu
> module before running the .BIN and got the same result ("The image was
> not found in memory.") after the 'init 6'.
> 
> I suppose it's possible something's pulling the dell_rbu module out
> without my knowing it, but I'd be surprised.  This is a stock CentOS
> installation.
> 
> I suppose I can try going into single user mode, performing the
> update, syncing like mad, then forcing the power off rather than doing
> an 'init 6' and see if that helps.

No, not power off please. :-)  A simple "/sbin/shutdown -r now" should
suffice.

You might try using the raw dellBiosUpdate program and pass
--force_mono to it, in case it's an issue with detecting packetized vs
monolithic mode.

# modprobe dell_rbu
# dellBiosUpdate -u --force-mono -f /usr/share/firmware/bios/whatever
# /sbin/shutdown -r now


Thanks for your time in helping track this down!
-Matt

-- 
Matt Domsch
Software Architect
Dell Linux Solutions linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux
Linux on Dell mailing lists @ http://lists.us.dell.com