Upgrading iDRAC firmware (Dell IPMI)

Upgrading the Dell iDRAC (IPMI/BMC) firmware on a non-RedHat system is a painful experience.
DISCLAIMER: This process bypasses all the checks, licenses agreements, notes and anything else meant to protect you from yourself. Only carry out these steps if you really do know what you're doing!

UPDATE: These instructions aren't currently working on Debian Squeeze AMD64.

Right - so here's the steps:

1. Download the latest firmware from support.dell.com
2. Prepare a Debian sub-environment. For instructions see http://anothersysadmin.wordpress.com/2008/02/22/howto-install-dell-openmanage-system-administrator-on-exotic-linux-distributions/
   1. The instructions are for a Debian Etch 4.0 environment. You can easily use those instructions to build the latest Debian environment by substituting etch for the latest distro, e.g. lenny.
   2. Take a backup of your new debian sub-environment. It'll save your life when least expected while working with commercial, so-called "open" tools, that don't work anywhere except on RedHat.
   3. You can clear out a few unused packages as detailed after the chroot command below. You can also clear out downloaded package files before packaging your environment for re-use.
3. Ensure a few mounts are in place within your Debian sub-environment:

   mount -o bind /dev /debian/dev
   mount -t proc none /debian/proc
   mount -t sysfs none /debian/sys

4. Make sure the necessary modules are loaded for the actual flashing:

   modprobe ipmi-devintf
   modprobe ipmi-si

5. Enter the Debian sub-environment

   chroot /debian /bin/bash

   1. At this point you can purge a few unnecessary apps so they don't interfere with your main environment, and to save a bit of space:

      # aptitude purge bsd-mailx cron exim4 exim4-base exim4-config \
      exim4-daemon-light iptables klogd laptop-detect logrotate \
      sysklogd tasksel tasksel-data

   2. And add a few useful tools: sysvconfig provides RedHat-like service controls; vi(m), well, enough said..
      

      # aptitude install sysvconfig vim
      UPDATE: if you're running a 64bit system you'll also need to install 32bit support:
      # aptitude install ia32-libs rpm

   3. Finally clean out unnecessary package files from /var/cache/apt/.

      # aptitude clean

6. Unpack the new firmware package and apply the firmware update (it's a good idea to do this in a screen session to avoid being interrupted):

   # screen -R -DD
   # ./IDRAC6_FRMW_LX_R257033.BIN --extract /tmp/idrac
   # cd /tmp/idrac
   # ./bmcfwul -i=payload/firmimg.d6

• The final command, bmcfwul, can take a long time and may appear to hang. Be patient - it will report back eventually.
• You will have to make sure the ipmi-devintf and ipmi-si kernel modules are loaded in your main OS instance


7. That's it - you should now have an upgraded firmware.

Note that you must unmount /debain/dev, /debian/proc and /debian/sys before packaging.

# umount /debian/dev
# umount /debian/proc
# umount /debian/sys
# tar -vcjf /tmp/debian.tbz2 /debian

References:

1. https://subtrac.sara.nl/oss/omsa_2_deb/wiki
2. http://anothersysadmin.wordpress.com/2008/02/22/howto-install-dell-openmanage-system-administrator-on-exotic-linux-distributions/