****Re: I'm uncomfortable with firmware update

[Craig White]

On Tue, 2007-11-20 at 12:10 -0500, J. Epperson wrote:
> On Tue, November 20, 2007 10:23, Jim Nelson wrote:
> > IIRC, they've had problems with BMC firmware updates, and disabled them -
> >  I went ahead and did those with a USB floppy and a DOS disk.
> >
> 
> The whole Dell repository situation has the feel of something that's being
> tinkered with in this way, like something that doesn't work right can be
> commented out, then worked on later and re-released for unannounced
> regression testing by the peer community.  It's better than those BIN
> scripts that give "out of space" and/or "insufficient privilege" messages
> on failures that turn out to be syntax errors on a "head" or "tail"
> command, but still has a "Hodie natus est radici frater" character.
----
there is a kind of proof of concept to it...Dell support for Linux has
certainly had an edge to it, it's constantly improving and I'm willing
to live with some of the roughness as it improves (wish they would chip
in and help with kernel/grub support on Optiplex 320 but that is not for
this list).

Of course, the administrator always has the option of the normal
methodology of updating BIOS/firmware which makes sense to them.

I tend to view BIOS/firmware updates as not time critical unless of
course, they are time critical so I don't really mind being part of the
process of getting this methodology up to speed...clearly it's not for
everyone.

Craig