Question on firmware updates

[Zembower, Kevin]

Michael, thanks so much for your very complete answer. I think I
understand completely.

-Kevin

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael E Brown [mailto:Michael_E_Brown at dell.com] 
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 11:51 AM
To: Zembower, Kevin
Cc: linux-poweredge at lists.us.dell.com
Subject: Re: Question on firmware updates

On Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 03:47:23PM -0500, Zembower, Kevin wrote:
> I just installed the firmware updating system from the Dell Unofficial
> firmware repository, and it worked like a champ. Thank you so much to
> Michael Brown and his team for working on this.
> 
> In the directions, it shows this command to examine if firmware
updates
> are needed:
>   up2date --solvedeps=$(bootstrap_firmware -u)

You only need to run this command in two instances:
  1) you add new hardware
  2) new updates become available in the repository for hardware that
was not previously supported. (eg. you bootstrap the system when the
repository doesnt contain HARDWARE_X updates, but they become available
a couple months later.)

> On my systems, I run this nightly in a cron job to check for updates:
>    # Determine if any updates are needed
>    0 0 * * * /usr/sbin/up2date --update --dry-run
> 
> Will my cron job command also show me firmware updates when available,
> or do I need to include the first up2date command with the 'solvedeps'
> option?

This should be sufficient. Personally, I would recommend running the
bootstrap_firmware on a periodic basis, say monthly or so.

Here is an example:

0) assume fresh system with a PERC and nothing else

1) clean/fresh install

2) wget bootstrap | bash
  --> installs the repositories

3) up2date --solvedeps=$(bootstrap_firmware -u)
  --> installs system_bios RPM, PERC RPM
  --> does *NOT* actually update the BIOS or PERC firmware until...

4) update_firmware
  --> actually does the bios/perc updates

5) 0 0 * * * /usr/sbin/up2date --update --dry-run
  --> nothing interesting 

6) 0 0 * * * /usr/sbin/up2date --update --dry-run
  --> it runs daily, so lets assume nothing interesting happens for
several days... :)

7) New BIOS is released by Dell and is placed in the repo
8) 0 0 * * * /usr/sbin/up2date --update --dry-run
  --> should download the BIOS rpm but not actually install either the
RPM (--dry-run), or do a bios update (because the RPM wasnt installed)

9) You see the nightly cron output and run "up2date --update"
10) new BIOS rpm installed, but BIOS is not actually physically updated
until...

4) update_firmware
  --> actually does the bios updates

7) You add a DRAC card to the system
8) 0 0 * * * /usr/sbin/up2date --update --dry-run
  --> nothing interesting happens because you need to re-bootstrap the
system

9) up2date --solvedeps=$(bootstrap_firmware -u)
  --> installs DRAC update RPM
  --> does *NOT* actually update the DRAC ...

10) update_firmware
  --> actually does the DRAC updates



Hopefully the above timeline sort of explains how and why things happen.
--
Michael