PXE Boot the Dell Disk Firmware Update

Dell has released a firmware update package for many types of hard-disks. The update must be done with the disks offlne. See:

• http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/format.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&deviceid=15306&libid=44&releaseid=R174948&vercnt=2&formatcnt=0&SystemID=PWE_1950&servicetag=&os=LIN4&osl=en&catid=-1&impid=-1

(These instructions copied from Tom's PXEBootDellDiag page)

Get Diagnostics Package

It seems that this process might be a bit easier to do on Windows (download the .exe file), as you won't have the end-of-line issues with the script file, but I don't have a Windows box handy... Note that an actual bootable image file is not included in the package, but can be created from the package, so you need a machine with the proper OS (i.e., Windows) to run the package on to create the image (what the heck were they thinking?!?).

ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/SATA/Dell_multi-device_A05_R174948.exe

Run the "installer" to create the bootable image. By default it calls it diags.img. We will rename it to drivefwupdate.img. Put this image where it can be served by the TFTP server. Tom's convention was to create /tftpboot/pxelinux/dell to hold this type of file. I have replicated this to umopt1.aglt2.org and will add the drivefwupdate.img for the harddisk firmware update setup there.

MEMDISK

To boot the image, we will use the memdisk kernel that is included in the syslinux pxeboot package. It is at /usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk Copy it to the root of the tftpboot area: /tftpboot/pxelinux/

Adding to ROCKS

http://www.rocksclusters.org/roll-documentation/base/4.3/x167.html

I didn't get the hostname wildcard "%" described in the documentation to work. Leave hostname of the pxeaction command to set it for all hosts.

bash-3.00# rocks add host pxeaction action='fwdiskupdate' command='kernel memdisk' args='append initrd=dell/drivefwupdate.img' 
bash-3.00# rocks set host pxeboot c-102-4 action='fwdiskupdate'

I have run the 'rocks add host...' command on both umopt1.aglt2.org and msurox.aglt2.org already.

Monitor remotely

If you enable console redirection after boot, the diagnostic is usable via SOL. Not sure about settings for pxelinux that might make SOL work without resorting to CRAB. See IPMIDetails for information on how to use TSOL...

-- ShawnMcKee - 19 May 2008