HOWTO - Firmware updates on debian installed servers per liveCD

[Kent_Sparling at Dell.com]

There is also a Whitepaper available documenting how to leverage the
Dell System Build and Update Utility DVD in combination with the SUU to
create a bootable CD/DVD for firmware updates.

The paper can be found here:

http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/solutions/single_media_integration_
of_systems_build_update_utility_firmware_repository.pdf

Regards,

Kent

-----Original Message-----
From: linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com
[mailto:linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com] On Behalf Of Christian Placzek
Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 9:19 AM
To: linux-poweredge-Lists
Subject: HOWTO - Firmware updates on debian installed servers per liveCD

The situation:

You love debian running on Dell Servers and want to perform firmware 
updates to this servers. Dell provides an update DVD (SUU) for most of 
there servers. But this DVD won't run on a debian installation.

You are able to run some firmware updates with the single files directly

from debian and some with a trick. (Hint: stop the 'dsm_sa_ipmi' service

manually once before starting the update program and a second time 
before actually updating using 'screen')

But e. g. the mainboard bios update fails on a PE2970.

So you have to boot in an OS supported by Dell. One liveCD/DVD which 
fulfill this prerequisite is the located at

http://ait.web.psi.ch/services/linux/guides/system/livecd/download.html

There is a liveDVD based on RHEL 5.1. I have used the i386 version. 
Download the DVD because this one is the only one which contains the 
libstd++.so.5 (be precise the package compat-libstdc++-33). This lib is 
neccessary for running the 'suu' application.

I downloaded the SUU-ISO-image under debian and stored it locally 
because our server don't have two DVD's. So I can mount the 
SUU-ISO-image per loop device after booting the liveDVD.

Burn the liveDVD and boot it ('linux screen=1024x768' if you are using a

KVM). It is possible to boot the image using the virtual media of the 
DRAC module also. In this case update the firmware of the DRAC module 
per web interface before you run SUU. If not the DRAC firmware will be 
updated per SUU. Then the server will hang because the connection to the

virtual media get lost after the firmware of the DRAC module is applied.

This is no problem at all. Simply reboot the server after the web 
interface of the DRAC is available again. But avoiding one reboot could 
save some time if you are updating several servers ;-)

One caveat is the behavior of the virtual media: sometimes the virtual 
media get disconnected. I have solved this problem flashing the DRAC5 
module twice with the same version (v. 1.33).

Have fun

Kris

PS: hope you understand my english ;-)