Problems updating BIOS on a PE 860

[Michael_E_Brown at Dell.com]

This is a relatively common and expected error message. You can do a couple things:

1) Shut down any unneeded programs and retry the update a few times (up to four or five).

2) reboot the computer and retry the update a few times.

Basically, the update on your machine requires *physically* contiguous RAM, 1MB of it. This can sometimes be difficult to find and the update fails. Usually just retrying a few times and possibly rebooting will fix it.
--
Michael


-----Original Message-----
From: firmware-tools-devel-bounces at lists.us.dell.com on behalf of Jens Vagelpohl
Sent: Mon 8/27/2007 4:45 AM
To: firmware-tools-devel at lists.us.dell.com
Subject: Problems updating BIOS on a PE 860
 
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Hash: SHA1

Hi everyone,

I am trying to use firmware_update to update the BIOS and the RAID  
firmware. However, it doesn't complete. The full output is at the  
bottom.

I have already rebooted the machine, which didn't help. The dell_rbu  
module is loaded. The server has 1 GB RAM and doesn't run anything  
apart from the Dell server admin tools, named and Postfix on CentOS  
4.5 with all updates applied.

Here's the getSystemId output:

[root at rex ~]# getSystemId
Libsmbios:    0.13.7
System ID:    0x01E6
Service Tag:  HZ6QQ2J
Express Service Code: 39132940411
Product Name: PowerEdge 860
BIOS Version: A01
Vendor:       Dell Computer Corporation
Is Dell:      1

Has anyone else come up against this issue?

jens


- ----------------------------------------
[root at rex ~]# update_firmware --yes

Searching storage directory for available BIOS updates...

Checking System BIOS for PowerEdge 860 - a01
         Available: system_bios(ven_0x1028_dev_0x01e6) - a04
         Found Update: system_bios(ven_0x1028_dev_0x01e6) - a04
Checking Dell SAS 5/iR Adapter Controller 1 Firmware -  
00.06.50.00.06.06.00.02
         Available: pci_firmware 
(ven_0x1000_dev_0x0054_subven_0x1028_subdev_0x1f09) -  
00.10.49.00.06.12.02.00
         Found Update: pci_firmware 
(ven_0x1000_dev_0x0054_subven_0x1028_subdev_0x1f09) -  
00.10.49.00.06.12.02.00

Found firmware which needs to be updated.

Running updates...
Installing system_bios(ven_0x1028_dev_0x01e6) - a04
Installation failed for package: system_bios(ven_0x1028_dev_0x01e6) -  
a04
aborting update...

The error message from the low-level command was:

Could not update the system BIOS.

Many times, this is due to memory constraints. The BIOS update can  
require from
1 to 4 megabytes of physically contiguous free RAM in order to do the  
update.
Because memory can become fragmented, this is not always available.  
To correct
this, try rebooting and running the update immediately after reboot.

The output from the low-level bios update command was:

Supported RBU type for this system: (MONOLITHIC)
Using RBU v1 method: MONOLITHIC
Prep driver for data load.
writing (0) to file: /sys/firmware/rbu/packetdatasize
writing (524380) to file: /sys/firmware/rbu/rbudatasize

An Error occurred. The Error message is:
     Cannot allocate memory

Problem updating BIOS. Common problems are:

     -- Insufficient permissions to perform operation.
        Try running as a more privileged account.
           Linux  : run as 'root' user
           Windows: run as 'administrator' user

     -- dell_rbu device driver not loaded.
        Try loading the dell_rbu driver
           Linux  : insmod dell_rbu
           Windows: dell_rbu driver not yet available.

Writing RBU data (4096bytes/dot):
- ----------------------------------------------------
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iD8DBQFG0p1JRAx5nvEhZLIRAlX3AJ0axqXvwso8Ichy+OmCLjLfiAoH8gCfflrT
ayhbTHBwQH646+qf03SHtZs=
=MKo5
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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