C H A P T E R 1 |
Flash Upgrading Your Server to Software Release 1.3 |
This chapter contains procedures and information for upgrading Sun Fire X4500 server to software release 1.3 from software release 1.2.
Note - You must upgrade from the last software release. For example, if you have software release 1.0, you must upgrade to software release 1.1 and then upgrade to software release 1.2, then 1.3 |
The Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM) firmware (FW) and BIOS are tightly coupled and are always updated together. The software release 1.3 contains new ILOM FW and BIOS upgrades, plus a number of optional enhancements:
The following section shows a summary of the steps you should perform to update your server from software release 1.1 to software release 1.3.
1. Review the section Special Considerations Regarding the ILOM Firmware 1.1.8 Update for known issues and considerations regarding the flash upgrade.
2. Determine the version of the ILOM firmware that you currently have.
See How to Determine The Firmware Version of Your Server.
3. Download the flash image .ima file by following links from the URL below:
a. Locate the Hardware Drivers section.
b. Click the X64 Servers and Workstations.
c. Click Sun Fire X4500 SW 1.3.
e. Enter your Username and Password.
Tip - If you do not have a Username and Password, you can register free of charge by clicking Register Now. |
f. Click Accept License Agreement.
g. Click the ILOM 1.1.8 file (ilom.X4500-1.1.8.ima).
4. Perform the flash upgrade by using one of the following:
Tip - Because of the increased memory usage during web-based GUI operations, you might need to use N1 System Manager or the ILOM CLI load command to upgrade the ILOM firmware. |
For details of firmware flashing, see the N1 System Manager documentation or the ILOM Administration Guide for the version of ILOM supported for your platform. For example:
From the ILOM CLI, use the following command:
load -source tftp://tftpserver/firmware.ima
where tftpserver is a trivial file-transfer protocol (TFTP) server and firmware.ima is the name of the image file, such as, ilom.X4500-1.1.8.ima
Online documentation for Sun N1 System Manager can be found at:
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/prod/n1.sysmgr#hic
For instructions on performing a flash upgrade, see the section, "Upgrading the ILOM Firmware" in the Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM) Administration Guide, for ILOM 1.1.1. You can find the document at this URL:
http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hardware/docs/Servers/x64_servers/X4500/index.html
5. (Optional) If you cannot get output to your serial console after the flash upgrade, you might have to clear CMOS settings. This is because your default CMOS settings might have been changed by the new BIOS upgrade.
To clear CMOS settings, use the following commands (in this example, the default username, root, and the default password, changeme, are used):
ipmitool -U root -P changeme -H SP-IP chassis power off
ipmitool -U root -P changeme -H SP-IP chassis bootdev disk clear-cmos=yes
where SP-IP is the IP address of the service processor.
6. (Optional) If you have any problems with the flash upgrade, refer to the sectionRecovering From a Failed Flash Update.
This section provides three methods of determining your firmware version build number:
1. Connect an RJ-45 Ethernet cable to the NET MGT Ethernet port on the back panel.
2. Establish an SSH connection using the following command:
where SP-IP is the IP address of the service processor.
3. Enter the default password when you are prompted:
After you have successfully logged in, the SP displays its default command prompt:
4. Type the version command, which will return output similar to the following:
SP firmware build number: 11888
SP firmware date: Tue Sep 13 12:50:37 PDT 2006
The ILOM firmware is the build number listed above.
1. Configure your terminal device or the terminal emulation software running on a laptop or PC to the following settings:
2. Connect a serial cable from the RJ-45 SER MGT port on your server's back panel to your terminal device or PC.
3. Press Enter on the terminal device to establish a connection between that terminal device and the server's SP.
The SP displays a login prompt.
In this example login prompt, 0003BA84D777 is the Ethernet MAC address of the SP. This will be different for each server.
4. Log in to the ILOM SP and type the default user name (root) with the default password (changeme).
After you have successfully logged in, the SP displays its default command prompt:
5. Type the version command, which will return output similar to the following:
SP firmware build number: 11888
SP firmware date: Tue Sep 13 12:50:37 PDT 2006
The ILOM firmware build version is the build number listed above.
1. Connect to the ILOM Web GUI by typing the IP address of the server's SP into your browser's URL field. For example:
2. Log in to the ILOM SP and type the default user name (root) with the default password (changeme).
The first web page that is presented is the System Information -> Versions page, which includes the Build Number.
Use one of the three methods listed here to locate the ILOM SP and IP address.
For example, the following command can be used to create a list of Sun Fire X4500 servers:
n1sh show server | grep 'X4500'
To reset the ILOM SP, you can do any of the following:
ipmitool -U root -P password -H SP-IP bmc reset cold
where SP-IP is the IP address of the service processor.
For complete details, see the Integrated Lights-Out Manager Administration Guide for ILOM 1.1.1.
This section describes considerations that might affect the firmware upgrade. For general issues on ILOM, see the Sun Fire X4500 Server Product Notes. Refer also, to the Integrated Lights Out Manager Administration Guide for ILOM 1.1.1, and Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM) Supplement for Sun Fire X4500 Server.
The host CPU and DIMM FRU information shown by the service processor is provided to the service processor during each BIOS power-on-self-test (POST). Therefore, after a BIOS/ILOM upgrade, this FRU information is empty until the first host BIOS POST.
This is expected behavior. Reboot the server and allow it to complete POST during bootup to repopulate the FRU lists.
If you use the CLI to perform the update and JavaRConsole is active, a dialog box might appear in JavaRConsole with the following message and an OK button:
Keyboard redirection error: an established connection was aborted by the software in your host machine
This is expected behavior. Click OK in the dialog box to continue.
It is possible that clicking the OK button will not close the dialog box. In that case, terminate the JavaRConsole process.
For example, on a Windows platform:
1. Press Control+Alt+Delete to bring up the list of open processes.
2. Terminate the JavaRConcole process.
After updating the system BIOS, you might need to clear CMOS settings to get serial console output from the host. This is because CMOS defaults might be changed from your existing settings in the new BIOS.
If you cannot get serial console output, clear the CMOS settings. To clear CMOS settings, use the following commands (in this example, the default username, root, and the default password, changeme, are used):
ipmitool -U root -P changeme -H SP-IP chassis power off ipmitool -U root -P changeme -H SP-IP chassis bootdev disk clear-cmos=yes
ILOM 1.1.8 service processor provides a new, more reliable flash layout. Because of the layout changes, special steps might be required to downgrade to previous ILOM 1.0.x releases.
You might have to perform the flash downgrade to 1.0.x process 2 times, to reformat the flash layout to the old format. If the flash downgrade through GUI, CLI, or N1 System Manager does not succeed the first time, retry a second time to complete the process.
The new ILOM flash process only powers off the host if a new BIOS version is needed. The ILOM CLI load command provides the -f option to force update of all components. Use the following command to force updating all firmware components:
load -f tftp://tftpserver/firmware.ima
where tftpserver is a trivial file-transfer protocol (TFTP) server and firmware.ima is the name of the image file, such as, ILOM.X4500-1.1.8.ima
ILOM service processor might not successfully update the BIOS version, if a previous flash upgrade has failed. If the BIOS version is not correct after ILOM flash upgrade completes, use the -f force flag on the ILOM CLI 'load' command, to force BIOS flash upgrade. For details, see New ILOM Flash Update Layout.
Sometimes after flashing an image on SP, the ILOM WebGUI will not allow you to log in and gives an Authentication fail error. Clearing the cache and cookies of the web browser enables you to log in as usual.
ILOM 1.1.x releases provide limited support for non-UN keyboards. Keys above the normal US keyboard range are transmitted to the server.
However, key remapping between US and non-US keyboards is not automatically performed, and there are keys which do not function, which results in limitations in internalization support in Java Web Start.
Use the key and character remapping capabilities of the installed server OS to work around this issue.
If a firmware downgrade is performed on a Sun Fire X4500 from 1.1.1 to 1.0.X make sure the image is for the X4500 platform. The platform name is reflected in the image name.
When ethernet option cards are inserted and configured, Linux automatically reconfigures the device numbers. This might confuse PXE installation and the user as eth0 is renumbered to eth4.
1. Enable the interactive PXE installation method which lets the user select the appropriate ethernet device during run time. To enable an interactive method you must add the "interactive" macro in the kickstart file.
2. Change the default file under the PXE server to present the ethernet available at the time of the installation and let the user choose the appropriate ethernet device.
label th-rhel4.5-64-everything
kernel os_images/rhel4.5as_64bit/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz
append initrd=thumper/rhel4.5as_64bit/initrd.img ksdevice=eth0 load_ramdisk=1 network ks=nfs:XX.XX.XX.XX:/data/shared/pxeboot/thumper/rhel4.5as_64bit/ks_everything.cfg
The value ksdevice=eth0 in the above example hardcodes the ethernet device eth0. Since eth0 could change to eth4 or eth5, do not hardcode the value.
3. The following method is applicable to a system which is up and running:
a. Bind the device number to the mac address of the ethernet device with.
#ifconfig ethX
Replace X with the corresponding numeral like eth0
Edit the ifcfg file corresponding to the device.
#vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethX
Replace X with the corresponding numeral
HWADDR="previously copied mac address"
without any quotes. So that the line looks like:
This section contains instructions for recovering from a failed Sun Fire X4500 ILOM firmware upgrade. Several issues have been identified with the firmware upgrade, which could result in a failed or incomplete firmware upgrade.
Use the following procedure to recover from a failed firmware upgrade. Note that in a small percentage of cases (such as when no output is displayed on the SP serial port), the Graphics Redirect and Service Processor (GRASP) board must be replaced.
Caution - The ILOM 1.0 firmware released for Sun Fire X4500 (ilom.X4500-1.0.3 ima) must be used to recover from a failed flash update. |
Note - Numbers printed below are in hexidecimal unless otherwise noted. |
1. Determine if the ILOM SP first-level booter (referred to in this procedure as U-Boot) is intact. Follow documented procedures to connect to the SP serial port, apply power to the system, and observe the initial ILOM boot messages.
See the Sun Fire X4500 Server Installation Guide for details.
2. Enter the ILOM SP U-Boot command interpreter with xyzzy.
When the message, Booting linux in 2 seconds... is displayed, during ILOM initial boot, type xyzzy to enter the U-Boot command interpreter.
Note - The characters typed will not echo. Cutting and pasting the characters improves the chance of success. You might try cycling power to the system and entering xyzzy several times. |
Set the U-Boot environment variable, bootretry, to -1 to temporarily disable automatic reboot:
4. Configure the network for TFTP access.
a. Copy the ILOM SP firmware image to a TFTP server that is accessible on the same IP subnet as the ILOM SP network port.
b. Set the IP address for the ILOM SP and the TFTP server IP address by setting the ethaddr and serverip U-Boot variables.
set ipaddr n.n.n.n
set serverip n.n.n.n
5. Use the U-Boot tftp command to download the ILOM firmware image.
where firmware.ima is the name of the image file, such as, ILOM.X4500-1.1.x.ima.
Note - If the TFTP server or filename is incorrect, you might need to enter Ctl-C to halt the tftp command, then repeat this recovery procedure. |
Be sure that the complete flash image is actually downloaded successfully before proceeding. You should see a message similar to:
=> tftp 100000 ilom.X4500-x.x.x.ima Using FCC1 ETHERNET deviceTFTP from server 10.6.154.8; our IP address is 10.6.154.99Filename 'ilom.X4500-x.x.x.ima'.Load address: 0x100000 Loading:########################################################### ########################################################### ########################################################### ########################################################### ########################## done Bytes transferred = 13107200 (c80000 hex)
6. Confirm that the download succeeded:
a. Confirm that the tftp command output ends with:
Bytes transferred = ByteCount
b. Use the md command and confirm that its output displays strings from the beginning of the firmware image file. For example:
00100000: 244d4f44 554c4524 01004000 00000200 $MODULE$..@..... 00100010: 00000000 000000f2 67726173 70000000 ........grasp... 00100020: 01000200 40000000 61000000 0000ffff ....@...a....... 00100030: ffff0000 00000100 00000000 0000aa55 ...............U 00100040: 46575f56 45525349 4f4e3d31 2e302e31 FW_VERSION=1.0.1 00100050: 0a46575f 44415445 3d4d6172 20203320 .FW_DATE=Mar 3 00100060: 32303036 0a46575f 4255494c 4454494d 2006.FW_BUILDTIM 00100070: 453d3130 3a35363a 30370a46 575f4445 E=10:56:07.FW_DE 00100080: 53433d57 41524e49 4e47203a 20554e4f SC=WARNING : UNO 00100090: 46464943 49414c20 4255494c 44212120 FFICIAL BUILD!! 001000a0: 0affffff ffffffff ffffffff ffffffff ................
7. Erase the existing ILOM flash image:
a. Erase the exiting flash image with the erase ff200000 ffffffff command and the erase fe000000 feffffff command.
A series of dots will be displayed indicating the progress of the erase. For example:
.................................................................................Erased 200/200 sectors
b. If a failure occurs, retry the erase command repeatedly until it succeeds.
Note - If a persistent failure occurs, the service processor is not flash-upgradable, and must be replaced. Refer to the Sun Fire X4500 Server Service Manual for details on replacing the GRASP board. |
8. Program the new ILOM firmware image:
a. Use the U-Boot cp.b command to copy the new ILOM firmware image from the download location at 100000 to ff380000, until end address ffffffff.
=> cp.b 100000 ff380000 ffffffff
Copy to Flash .............................................................................................................................................done
b. Use the fmh command to verify the new ILOM firmware image.
Before resetting, make sure the copy succeeded, using the fmh command, which should display firmware sections. For example:
Listing FMH Modules Flash Size : 32768 KB Erase Size : 64 KB Sector Count : 512 FMH Located at 0xff380000 of Size 0x00020000 Name : grasp Ver : 1.0 Type : 0x0002 Flags : 0x0000 Size : 0x00000061 Location: 0xff380040 LoadAddr: 0xffffffff CheckSum: Not Computed -------------------------------------------------- FMH Located at 0xff3a0000 of Size 0x00120000 Name : sysbios Ver : 1.31 Type : 0x0000 Flags : 0x0100 Size : 0x00100000 Location: 0xff3c0000 LoadAddr: 0xffffffff CheckSum: Valid -------------------------------------------------- FMH Located at 0xff4c0000 of Size 0x000c0000 Name : osimage Ver : 1.0 Type : 0x0006 Flags : 0x0119 Size : 0x000ac9c8 Location: 0xff4c0040 LoadAddr: 0x00c00000 CheckSum: Valid ...
9. Reset the ILOM service processor.
Once you are certain that the service processor firmware image has been recovered, you can restart the service processor with the reset command.
Note - This manual ILOM SP recovery process does not reflash the system BIOS. Repeat the firmware upgrade process, using the ILOM GUI or CLI procedures as described in How to Flash Upgrade Your Server to Software Release 1.3 and the Integrated Lights-Out Manager Administration Guide. |
Be sure to reset your service processor and BIOS configuration settings as needed, because they might be lost during this recovery.
The SP and BIOS must always be updated together as a bundle. Separate BIOS updates or separate SP updates are not supported.
TABLE 1-1 lists the component versions for the Sun Fire X4500 software for the software release 1.0 (the first release)
TABLE 1-2 lists the component versions for the Sun Fire X4500 server software for software release 1.1.
TABLE 1-3 lists the component versions for the Sun Fire X4500 server software for software release 1.2.
TABLE 1-4 lists the component versions for the Sun Fire X4500 server software for software release 1.3.
Copyright © 2007, Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.