SUMMARY: SMBIOS (firmware) upgrade on X2100 ?

From: Rob De Langhe <rob.de.langhe_at_twistfare.be>
Date: Tue Sep 06 2011 - 04:51:55 EDT
thankx to David Cashion and Matthew Stier for sending me straight into the right direction : 

>From the Oracle site, after quite some bits of searching around, I found the patch 10275731 which contains BIOS 1.1.8 for X2100 servers.

Extracted it gives a "supplement_06-04-2008.iso" file, which I burned onto a DVD and stuffed into the X2100, then reset the machine to make it boot from that DVD. 
Option "2" allows to reflash the BIOS with that version 1.1.8, obviously losing all previous BIOS settings. It even ended up in a new boot message about corruption in the CMOS etc. So I had to hook up a SUN (USB) keyboard that I took from a SunRay desktop, plus hook the video cable from my PC monitor to the video port of the X2100, and restarted the machine to get into the BIOS menu via the "F2" key. Didn't change a thing, just saved and exited. Now the machine boots fine again from disk.

Now I will see whether this latest BIOS allows Solaris to read the (temperature) sensors of the machine, which should allow the drivers to slow down the fans from craziness to a respectable speed.

brgds
Rob

Citeren Rob De Langhe <rob.de.langhe@twistfare.be>:

> hi all,
>
> I find firmware (BIOS) upgrades on the Oracle site for SUN-X2100 M2 
> servers, but none for its predecessor X2100 (non-M2).
>
> Would these firmwares also fit the non-M2 server models ? Or will it 
> break the shebang ... ?
>
> I have both servers: a X2100-M2, and a X2100 (non-M2).
> The X2100-M2 has following BIOS, according to the "smbios" command output :
>   Version String: S40_3A19
>   Release Date: 02/25/2008
> The X2100 has following BIOS, according to the "smbios -B /dev/xsvc" 
> command output :
>   Version String: 1.0.0
>   Release Date: 09/27/2005
>
> And yes that version on the X2100 gives problems, because too old : 
> "dmesg" gave a message
> SMBIOS not loaded (SMBIOS format is too old for processing)
> and "prtdiag -v" fails with
> prtdiag: failed to open SMBIOS: System does not export an SMBIOS table
>
> All this works fine on the X2100-M2 with its BIOS from 2008.
>
> thx !
> Rob
>
>
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Received on Tue Sep 6 04:52:21 2011

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