Debian, dellomsa and omreport errors

[Trond Hasle Amundsen]

ingard mevåg <ingard at startsiden.no> writes:

> I recently started using the following nagios plugins for all our dell 
> systems:
> http://folk.uio.no/trondham/software/check_openmanage-3.4.9/check_openmanage
> .. and it reports something like the following for all our servers:
>
> serv1:~# /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_openmanage
> Controller 0 (PERC 5/i Integrated): Firmware is out of date (5.0.2-0003)
> Controller 0 (PERC 5/i Integrated): Driver is out of date (00.00.03.01)
> Controller 1 (SAS 5/E): Firmware is out of date (00.10.49.00.06.12.02.00)
> Controller 2 (SAS 5/E): Firmware is out of date (00.10.49.00.06.12.02.00)
>
> Is it possible to upgrade the firmware a) without booting the box? or b) 
> without taking the controller offline?
>
> We're running mostly debian etch and lenny 64bit

Hi Ingard,

I'm the author of that plugin. As far as I know, OpenManage sets the
controller in a degraded state simply because it knows that a newer
firmware and/or driver exists. It does not mean that it is dangerous not
to upgrade the firmware and driver. It can be an annoyance, and
check_openmanage has a blacklisting feature that can be used to suppress
these alarms:

  check_openmanage -b ctrl_fw=0,1,2/ctrl_driver=0,1,2

In the above example, messages about out-of-date controller firmware and
driver on controllers 0,1 and 2 are suppressed by check_openmanage.

As others have explained, upgrading the controller firmware requires a
reboot. Unfortunately, Debian is not supported by Dell and therefore no
firmware update scripts are available for Debian. You could try the
scripts for Red Hat and SuSE, they may work on Debian as well.

As for how critical a certain firmware or driver upgrade is, you'll have
to read the changelog for the firmware/driver available from the Dell
support site (support.dell.com).

Our policy is to upgrade firmware whenever we have scheduled downtime,
and ignore the driver completely (using blacklisting), thinking that the
Red Hat official driver is good enough.

Cheers,
-- 
Trond H. Amundsen <t.h.amundsen at usit.uio.no>
Center for Information Technology Services, University of Oslo