On 03/06/2007, at 7:33 PM, Stuart Henderson wrote:
On 2007/06/03 14:09, Sam Vaughan wrote:
if anyone has a working PXE bios-flash setup for these and wouldn't
mind sharing how, please drop me a line, when I try the system hangs
after memdisk loads the bios-flash image.
I'd be interested to know about this too. Since my x4100s have no
CD/DVD
ROM drive (I've got the four-SAS-disk config) I can't use Sun's
BIOS CD
image. I couldn't even mount the ISO to get at the necessary files.
I don't have one but it looks like X4100 is much easier, it appears
that
the BIOS update is done with the ILOM firmware via the service
processor
using an .ima file from http://www.sun.com/download/products.xml?
id=45b94409
It certainly looks that way from the file descriptions, doesn't it?
However installing that .ima file to upgrade the ILOM firmware gave
no indication that it also upgraded the BIOS. All their previous
releases looked like this:
<http://www.sun.com/download/products.xml?id=45007c22>
The descriptions of the .ima file still mention the BIOS, but the
required files to build a bootable DOS image to update the BIOS are
all provided separately. When upgrading to those previous releases,
I followed the docs and updated the ILOM firmware, then built the DOS
image and booted from it. The BIOS certainly hadn't been updated at
that point, and running the DOS tool worked as documented.
It's a massive pain in the arse to have to boot into DOS to upgrade a
machine that is otherwise completely serviceable remotely via the
ILOM. It basically means a visit to the data centre with a USB
stick, but as of this 1.3 release I can't even do that!
But I take your point, Stuart, what the hell is the mention of the
BIOS update in the .ima file descriptions about and is there really a
much easier way that's just not mentioned in the docs?
Have you had any success with IPMI SoL? Whilst the Java app works
fine for
remote access, I'd much rather not have to launch it when all I
really want
is access to the console.
I only have X2100 and I didn't want to lose the decent NIC, I got
as far
as power control via ipmitool but didn't look at SoL, I'm just
using good
old-fashioned serial console and masterswitch.
Fair enough. I'll just put up with the Java app to redirect video
and USB for now then.
Thanks,
Sam
