dellBiosUpdate simply doesn't work on a 2950

[Michael E Brown]

On Mon, Apr 16, 2007 at 06:16:43PM -0700, Sam Flory wrote:
> Michael E Brown wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 16, 2007 at 05:43:14PM -0700, Sam Flory wrote:
> >>   Is anyone able to update the bios via the dellBiosUpdate utility?  I
> >> done the following:
> 
> > 
> >> - reboot to single user mode "/usr/bin/dellBiosUpdate -u  -force_mono
> >> --hdr newbios.hdr"
> >> Fails to update at boot
> > 
> > This normally works. Dont force it to use the less-efficient method,
> > though.
> 
>   I'm 99% certain that I tried it this way
> 
> > 
> >> I'm running the latest libsmbios-0.13.5-1.el4.
> > 
> > 2950 should support packet mode, which means there is no longer a
> > requirement to have physically contiguous free memory. The 2950 was one
> > of my test machines a while back, so I know it works... I'll check it
> > out again when I can find a free one.
> > 
> 
>   I was just being through as the packet mode wasn't working.  I was
> hoping that it had something to do with the 8G of system memory, or
> linux allocating too much low memory to buffering.  At this point I may
> break down an attempt to automate the upgrade via memdisk, grub, and dos.

Hmm... well, as an experiment, you could try limiting mem to 4GB. It is
possible that somehow the kernel has all it's free memory >4GB and is
failing because of that. Can you cut and paste the exact error message
and command line?
--
Michael