Hi

Since quite a while I wanted to update the firmware on my good olde
tape drive. However, I do not have any contract all newer HPE downloads
require. Searching the web I stumbled over some old messages [1] and
[2] from Doug Gilbert which paved the way to easily do such firmware
update.

I have an EH957A/EH957B HP StoreEver LTO-5 Ultrium 3000 SAS internal
half-height tape drive which had the standalone Z64D firmware e.g.
reporting the following upon boot (dmesg):

[10062376.346530] scsi 0:0:1:0: Sequential-Access HP       Ultrium 5-
SCSI   Z64D PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
...
[10062376.378197] st 0:0:1:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 1

The later message reporting sg3 is important to know for the commands
below.

The non-paywalled firmware is actually available within some EXE file
[3] which may be easily unzipped.

Pages 228 and 229 of the HP LTO Ultrium Tape Drives Technical Reference
Manual Volume 3: Host Interface Guide, LTO 5 drives [4] talks about how
the WRITE BUFFER 3Bh command may be used to update the firmware by
first sending it using mode 4 and then initiating the update using mode
5. Luckily, the sg3_utils come with some convenience tools easily
allowing to do just that:

sudo sg_write_buffer -b 4k -I Z6ED_019_233.E -m 4 /dev/sg3
sudo sg_write_buffer -m 5 /dev/sg3

And - TADA - my drive is updated:

[10067140.872255] scsi 0:0:2:0: Sequential-Access HP       Ultrium 5-
SCSI   Z6ED PQ: 0 ANSI: 6

Thanks Doug Gilbert for the usefull insights into SCSI tape drive
operation details. Keep up the good work!

[1] 
https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org/msg69571.html

[2] https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/7946871/#17063991

[3] 
https://downloads.hpe.com/pub/softlib2/software1/sc-windows/p368283668/v124587/cp031432.exe

[4] 
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E21419_04/en/LTO5_Vol3_E5b/LTO5_Vol3_E5b.pdf

Cheers

Marcel

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