mass bios & firmware update on PE1855/1955 using OM IT Assistant

[Hostmaster]

Hi Honza,
Is the unofficial firmware repo not suitable to your needs?

http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Repository/firmware

You could even script a login to each of your servers, install the repo, upgrade
the firmware from the repo, and schedule (or immediately) reboot. Only possible
problem is last time I checked, the firmware repo is not currently flashing BMC
firmware, and it only supports specific distros.

Best Regards, 

Richard Garner (A+, N+, AMBCS, MOS-O) 
Hostmaster 
Computer Service Centre 
web     http://www.computerservicecentre.com  


-----Original Message-----
From: Honza Novak [mailto:kacerr at developers.zlutazimnice.cz] 
Posted At: 03 January 2008 07:47
Posted To: Microsoft Office Outlook Embedded Message
Conversation: mass bios & firmware update on PE1855/1955 using OM IT Assistant
Subject: mass bios & firmware update on PE1855/1955 using OM IT Assistant

Hi all,

i'm facing bios/firmware update on about 60 servers and if there is easy 
way i would like to use it.
I know, that i can spend a night in serverhousing runing with SUU CD/DVD 
around all computers and maybe make another rounds with updating SAS 
controllers.

But i found that there is a way of update bios with help of OMSA 
installed on target servers and IT Assistant. Then i can choose all 
servers with linux (or windows) installed and update bios on all of them 
at once.
But i found two obstacles, that i'm not walk around at the moment.

1. i can update system bios, but i cannot update SAS controller (on 
PE1955), is there a way how to do it using IT assistant?
2. i don't like to run the bios update process as a root, because 
regularly we have permitRootLogin=no in ssh deamons, can bios be updated 
with different user that root? is it enough to be member of root group 
(i don't think so, i fell that i tried this, but i'm not 100% sure).

Any hints or advices are welcome,
Thanks a lot for any of them.

Honza


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