Firmware updates -- embarrasing questions

[Michael E Brown]

On Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 09:57:42PM +0100, Faris Raouf wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> I'm ever so slightly lost at the moment. Can someone point me in the right
> direction please?
> 
> On a PE1950, Centos 4.5 and with the (wonderful - thank you!) dell yum
> repositories theoretically set up (I was certainly able to install OMSA a
> while ago) and updated 5 mins ago to get the new repo configs though out of
> habit I used yum update rather than yum upgrade...
> 
> Exactly how do I go about finding out which bits needs firmware updates, and
> how might I actually install them?

The firmware-tools package does this. Also you can download SUU from the
Dell support website. You can also download individual updates from the
support website.

Instructions on setting up the firmware repository:
http://auslistsprd01.us.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Repository/firmware

I just regenerated all of the BIOS packages yesterday. Generally this
means that I probably screwed something up but dont know what it is yet.
:( Please discuss on the list if you have problems. (see the known
issues section on the wiki for what I currently know is broken).

> I know the PERC raid controller needs a firmware update because OMSA tells
> me I do.

I have some select PERC updates.

If you have a PERC that isnt supported in the repo, you can download a
Dell Update Package (DUP) from support.dell.com.

> But how do I easily find out about other bits other than trawling through
> everything that gives me a firmware version and trying to compare it against
> huge lists of stuff on the dell website or possibly in the yum repositories
> themselves?

The firmware-tools tries to get this all integrated. It is not quite
complete yet.
 
> And once I find out what I need, can I simply run a firmware update utility
> on the system itself (which is live and 100s of miles away though I do have
> a DRAC on it).
> 
> And regarding the PERC update, once I figure out how to actually do a
> firmware update, can I do it on a live system? Obviously I'll need a reboot,
> but is it normally safe? Will I lose settings? That would be bad on a disk
> controller :-(

All in the release notes for the DUPs if you use them. For
firmware-tools, you shouldnt ever lose settings. For production
machines, I would recommend using DUPs, as they are "supported".

> 
> Similarly my DRAC card---I seem to remember reading that a firmware update
> will kill the settings. I assume this includes the IP addresses, leaving me
> DRACless and I would then need to use the racadm command on the system
> itself to re-configure the IPs, gateway, password etc?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Faris
> p.s. a bit embarrassed to be asking about this stuff which I feel I should
> really know about already)

No problem. That is what this list is for.

> p.p.s. the LiveCD thing just posted about seems like a nice idea but isn't
> something I can easily do here

Live CD just uses the same tools you can install from the
software/firmware repositories.

--
Michael