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[Michael E Brown]

On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 01:50:03PM -0000, Giddings, Bret wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> This may be a dumb question or the wrong forum - so apologies in advance
> ...
> 
> I have a number of Dell servers running debian on which I would like to
> better manage the firmware updates. I have been able to frig the
> bootstrap.cgi program to work and allow installation on the servers.
> However, what is not clear to me is whether the current setup will only
> allow system BIOS firmware to be updated or whether things like PERC
> controllers are also included. The test system in question is a 2950 and
> although the system BIOS updated OK, there seems to be no recognition of
> the PERC 5/i, despite this apparently being something for which firmware
> is available in the repository
> (pci_firmware_ven_0x1028_dev_0x0015_subven_0x1028_subdev_0x1f03_version_
> a05), albeit one version behind what is current.

PERC's were all supported last year, but the upstream DUPs changed their
packaging with the latest OMSA version, so I had to pull PERC updates
out of the repo a month or so ago.

I'm working really hard on getting these back in the repo. Look for an
announcement sometime in the next week. There is a
/repo/firmware/testing repository with *ALL* Dell updates (PERC, ESM,
BMC, DRAC, HDD, etc). I have one remaining issue to figure out that is
keeping some BMC updates from applying and as soon as that is fixed, I
am going to make an announcement.


> 
> So, is the current status of the project that things like the PERC
> controllers are candidates for being updated and if so, is it something
> debian related that is failing to allow recognition of these addition
> firmware upgrades? Also, given that there does appear to be firmware for
> things like the PERC 5/i, should a newer version exist in the
> repository?

PERC 5/i works with the new packaging.

For now, firmware repo is RPM only. I have one other person, Mario
Limonciello, that is going to be working on debian packaging, so that
should come along sometime soon.
--
Michael