Once a while web-based update for firmware on IBM FlashSystem doesn’t work. Or it takes long time to finish. Then there is a time to make update manually by following steps:
Download firmware update packages you would like to apply
Log to FlashSystem using SSH and run command to clean failed or old files:
cleardumps -prefix /home/admin/upgrade
Go back to your computer and upload downloaded firmware payload files into FlashSystem using following commands:
Couple days ago I had following problem. I wanted to install the newest firmwares on Lenovo (IBM) x3650 M5 server. I used Bootable Media Creator to create CD with latest firmwares for this machine. Problem came when I looked into firmwares BOMC wanted to upgrade:
Problem was that I wanted to upgrade firmware for SAS card ServeRAID N2225 which was installed in this server. This card is also supported and there was also new firmware downloaded into BOMC directory:
It looked like BOMC didn’t detect card in server and therefore it didn’t put it into the list of firmwares which should be upgraded. I tried other server which was in same configuration and it was same result. Then I tried to press ALT+F1 combination in BOMC. New bash shell came on screen. I tried list directory “ls -al” and I was there are all the files with firmwares. So I have tried to run binary with mentioned firmware:
Tadaaaaa….firmware upgraded. It looks like Lenovo has some bugs in its tool BOMC. I hope Lenovo support will get at least close to IBM support.
Last two weeks I had to update some NTP servers from one German company. When I requested new firmware I received following e-mail:
Dear Sir,
unfortunately, I cannot provide a new firmware since your compact flash card is too small and the action might end up in a system’s inconsistency.
Thus, you are also not the only customer who is affected by this, we offer bigger compact flash cards for 65€ each. Please let me know whether this is of interest for you and if you need an official offer.
Mit freundlichem Gruß / With kind regards
So this made my very upset. To be able to upgrade to the newest version of firmware I had to pay 65EUR for new flashcard. So I wrote couple e-mail to this company. I wanted to know the reason why I need to invest more to NTP server. I found out that firmware got big and it cannot be uploaded into flash which came with NTP server. This looked weird to me. Why would I have to invest into device if manufacter’s engineers made a mistake. I already decided not to sell manufacter’s devices. And I though that was end of the story.
Today I received following e-mail:
Dear Ondrej,
I just wanted to let you know that we dramatically improved our update procedure and, after an intensive clean-up, released
the new firmware version 5.34h which can be installed on 64MB compact flash cards without any problems. The new release is 4 MB (~25%) smaller (!) than the previous version without removing any features.
Although you already expressed your extreme dissatisfaction with our products and decided for yourself to not recommend or
buy Meinberg products in the future, your feedback helped us to improve our software and I sincerely thank you for that.
Best Regards,
Heiko
So it’s funny how some angry and mad e-mails can change such a things. Now we can upgrade our devices. But I don’t think we will offer them anymore to customers 🙂
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