firmwareflash

Firmware Flash Utility for SAS Expanders

Purpose

Sun provides a Firmware Flash Utility for updating the expander firmware on SPARC and X64 based platforms. The utility provides a command line interface for installing updated firmware for systems with a SAS expander attached using the mpt(7d) driver. A man page is also provided for reference on the firmware flash utility usage.

This is an unbundled product and requires Solaris 10 10/08 or later. The utility allows customers to upgrade the SAS expander firmware on the Sun Fire T5140/T5240, Sun Storage J4200/J4300/J4400/J4500/J4650/J5100 Arrays, and also some storage blades.

Installation Instructions

Verify that the required patches (138888-05 or later for SPARC systems, 138889-05 or later for X64 systems) are installed on your system. (SPARC example shown below in the following steps)

# showrev -p | grep 138888

You can obtain the patches from SunSolve. Download the patch to /tmp and install on your system.

Install the required patch:

# patchadd /tmp/138888-05

Reboot your system after patch installation:

# reboot

Download the Firmware Flash Utility package. Save the downloaded tar archive into /tmp and extract the package.

# tar -xvf /tmp/SUNWfirmwareflash-1_9-sparc.tar

Install the Firmware Flash Utility package on your system.

# pkgadd -d /tmp SUNWfirmwareflash

Use the firmwareflash utility to list all the flashable ses devices in the system.

A flashable ses node will look similar to this:

# /usr/sbin/firmwareflash -l
List of available devices:
   Device[0] /devices/pci@0/pci@0/pci@2/scsi@0/ses@3,0:ses
     Class [sgen]
           Target port WWN  : 500605b00002453d
           Vendor           : SUN
           Product          : 16Disk Backplane
           Firmware revision: 5021

Obtain the correct firmware flash image files for your system from your Sun Support representative.

Flash the firmware onto each applicable ses device.

# /usr/sbin/firmwareflash -d <ses device path> \
    -f <bootrecord>,<mfgImg>,<core fw>

Note that you will need the full ses device path to complete this operation. See the example output in the steps above for details.

The <bootrecord> filename will look similar to filename.rxp

The <mfgImg> filename will look similar to mfgImageCust03V.bin

The <core fw> filename will look similar to sasxfwnv.5.02.10.00.fw

During the flashing process you should expect to see entries in /var/adm/messages about your ses device going offline and coming online. These messages are normal and expected.

If firmwareflash does not successfully flash each image, repeat the flash operation separately for the images which did not work. It might be necessary to wait for up to 90 seconds after the previous flash operation has concluded before flashing the next image onto the ses node.

You must now power cycle the system to run the newly flashed firmware.

# shutdown -i0 -g0 -y

Wait until the server displays the OpenBoot PROM ok prompt or the following menu:

r)eboot, o)k prompt, h)alt?

Power off the system.

sc> poweroff -fy

Wait until the system displays the following message:

Chassis | critical: Host has been powered off

Power on the server and boot to Solaris.

sc> poweron -c

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  1. Apr 15, 2009

    brucehill says:

    One more note to mention. The Firmware Flash Utility is included in OpenSolaris...

    One more note to mention.

    The Firmware Flash Utility is included in OpenSolaris distributions and is delivered in the SUNWfwflash package. The firmware flash command is named /usr/sbin/fwflash. Same functionality, just a different package name and command name.

  2. May 20, 2009

    billgood1 says:

    Re: Firmware Flash Utility for SAS Expanders Both rich text and wiki markup app...

    Re: Firmware Flash Utility for SAS Expanders

    Both rich text and wiki markup appear code unfriendly.

    The checkinstall script in SUNWfirmwareflash-1_3-i386 and SUNWfirmwareflash-1_3-sparc is in error.

    showrev -p returns all versions of installed patches

    REQPATCHREV=`$SHOWREV -p |$NAWK '/^Patch: 13888[89] 

    Unknown macro: {print $2}

    ' | \
    $SED  -e "s,.*,,"- '

     
    returned
    02
    03
    05
    06
    07
    08
    01

    and "$REQPATCHREV" -lt 04 fails

    adding a sort -nr is a fix.

    Bill

    1. May 20, 2009

      JT25 says:

      Hello Bill, I have contacted the engineering team and the fix is in the process ...

      Hello Bill,
      I have contacted the engineering team and the fix is in the process of integration for release shortly.

      Thanks,
      Jorge

    2. Jun 03

      JamesCMcPherson says:

      Hi Bill, I'm the engineer who wrote Pluggable fwflash, which is what you can dow...

      Hi Bill,
      I'm the engineer who wrote Pluggable fwflash, which is what you can download via SDLC as a package versioned @ 1.3.

      I am at a loss as to where you might have seen the checkinstall script being munged by rich text or wikicode.

      The checkinstall version that is included with both sparc and i386 versions of the downloadable package is plain text and not wikified at all. The shell script is correct - this has been verified on many systems.

      When and where did you see the checkinstall script in that bizarre state?

      James

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