interesting update_firmware bios update failure

[Michael E Brown]

On Sat, Aug 25, 2007 at 09:44:51PM +0100, Faris Raouf wrote:
> I finally managed to gird myself to do a firmware update using the repo and
> update_firmware

the goal here is to make this easy enough that people dont have to
'gird' themselves. :)

> This is a PE1950 with centos 4R5 (with Virtuozzo)

Hmm... I'm not familiar with Virtuozzo. It is a container-based
virtualization scheme, right? Shouldnt affect my stuff (hopefully).

> First of all I notice it hasn't found a DRAC firmware update, even though
> there was one. Should it have? I don't think it should have but I thought
> I'd better check just in case.

No, it wont find DRAC now. It should find a BMC update (but it wont
actually install it when you run update_firmware).

> But the real issue is that although it was able to update the PERC 5/i
> firmware with no problem, it failed with the system BIOS as follows:
> 
> ************************************
> ************************************
> [root at vz1 ~]# update_firmware --yes
> 
> Searching storage directory for available BIOS updates...
> 
> Checking Dell PERC 5/i Integrated Controller 1 Firmware - 5.0.2-0003
>         Available:
> pci_firmware(ven_0x1028_dev_0x0015_subven_0x1028_subdev_0x1f03) - 5.1.1-0040
>         Found Update:
> pci_firmware(ven_0x1028_dev_0x0015_subven_0x1028_subdev_0x1f03) - 5.1.1-0040
> Checking System BIOS for PowerEdge 1950 - 1.2.0
>         Available: system_bios(ven_0x1028_dev_0x01b3) - 1.3.7
>         Found Update: system_bios(ven_0x1028_dev_0x01b3) - 1.3.7
> 
> Found firmware which needs to be updated.
> 
> Running updates...
> Installing pci_firmware(ven_0x1028_dev_0x0015_subven_0x1028_subdev_0x1f03) -
> 5.1.1-0040 Installing system_bios(ven_0x1028_dev_0x01b3) - 1.3.7
> Installation failed for package: system_bios(ven_0x1028_dev_0x01b3) - 1.3.7
> 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, PACKET) Using RBU v1
> method: PACKET writing (0) to file: /sys/firmware/rbu/rbudatasize writing
> (4096) to file: /sys/firmware/rbu/packetdatasize Writing RBU data
> (4096bytes/dot):
> ............................................................................
> ............................................................................
> ............................................................................
> ...............................
> IO Error reading HDR File: No such file or directory

This is definitely "interesting". 

> *************************************
> *************************************
> 
> I know Michael mentioned there are issues with the BIOS updates in the past
> but I've not seen anybody report a problem like this one before. It was done
> immediately following a reboot, incidentally. 

There are no currently-known BIOS update failures except the expected
"Not enough memory" failure. You definitely hit something new.

> I would assume that using the LiveCD to boot from then do the update would
> probably solve this issue. I may also try installing the update "manually"
> using a BIN file or whatever. But to be honest I'm reasonably glad it didn't
> work in case I ran into the Ethernet port swapping issue afterwards. I do
> have the MAC addresses listed in the if-cfg files, but I'm chicken and if it
> didn't work it would mean some downtime and megastress while we got the
> datacentre to answer the phone, authenticate us, figure out what we wanted
> and then do it.

Did you try this multiple times, or just the one time?
--
Michael