Unable to apply offical BIOS update on 440SC - tail: cannot open `+78' for reading

[Matt Domsch]

On Sat, Feb 02, 2008 at 06:00:21PM +0000, Tom Chiverton wrote:
> On Saturday 02 February 2008 14:32:43 I wrote on linux-poweredge:
> > ./flash: error while loading shared libraries: libz.so.1: cannot open
> > shared object file: No such file or directory
> 
> Right, it is possible to use these official BIOS updaters (as opposed to what 
> comes through yum which isn't as up to date), but it it's a total pain.
> 
> Firstly you have to run the 'export _POSIX2_VERSION=199209' command from my 
> first post.
> Secondly, it appears that even though the SC440 is a 64-bit native system, the 
> flashing program is a 32-bit executable, and so requires a random 32-bit 
> library - namely 'zlib', as in 
> http://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=zlib&system=&arch=i386
> 
> Once the rpm was installed, I could go to run level 1, run the export line and 
> then run the updater and it flashed to the new BIOS fine.
> 
> This really, really, needs to be addressed, and I hope saying so here gets 
> back to the Dell Linux team.
> I see the .BIN file is just a shell script, so it could detect the 64-bit 
> arch. and run a 64-bit flasher easily, even more so for the funny 'export' 
> that's needed.
> If it's not going to work on a 64-bit arch., it really should say so straight 
> away.
> 
> Marios (cc'ed on post to the list) - I see you had the same issue back in 
> December, and no one was able to help then, so this is to let you know I have 
> managed to crack it on a similar system, and so hopefully yours too.

"Just In Time" development has arrived again.

firmware-tools can extract this now.  Michael Brown and I have been
working with the SC440 BIOS team on it for a few weeks to understand
what they did and how to get the RBU payload out of it.  The payload
was added to the firmware repository on linux.dell.com this past
Thursday.

http://linux.dell.com/firmware-tools/  for info on how to use that
repository.

Thanks,
Matt

-- 
Matt Domsch
Linux Technology Strategist, Dell Office of the CTO
linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux