</description>
</item>
+ <item>
+ <title>Automatically upgrading server firmware on Dell PowerEdge</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Automatically_upgrading_server_firmware_on_Dell_PowerEdge.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>At work we have heaps of servers. I believe the total count is
+around 1000 at the moment. To be able to get help from the vendors
+when something go wrong, we want to keep the firmware on the servers
+up to date. If the firmware isn't the latest and greatest, the
+vendors typically refuse to start debugging any problems until the
+firmware is upgraded. So before every reboot, we want to upgrade the
+firmware, and we would really like everyone handling servers at the
+university to do this themselves when they plan to reboot a machine.
+For that to happen we at the unix server admin group need to provide
+the tools to do so.</p>
+
+<p>To make firmware upgrading easier, I am working on a script to
+fetch and install the latest firmware for the servers we got. Most of
+our hardware are from Dell and HP, so I have focused on these servers
+so far. This blog post is about the Dell part.</P>
+
+<p>On the Dell FTP site I was lucky enough to find
+<a href="ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz">an XML file</a>
+with firmware information for all 11th generation servers, listing
+which firmware should be used on a given model and where on the FTP
+site I can find it. Using a simple perl XML parser I can then
+download the shell scripts Dell provides to do firmware upgrades from
+within Linux and reboot when all the firmware is primed and ready to
+be activated on the first reboot.</p>
+
+<p>This is the Dell related fragment of the perl code I am working on.
+Are there anyone working on similar tools for firmware upgrading all
+servers at a site? Please get in touch and lets share resources.</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+#!/usr/bin/perl
+use strict;
+use warnings;
+use File::Temp qw(tempdir);
+BEGIN {
+ # Install needed RHEL packages if missing
+ my %rhelmodules = (
+ 'XML::Simple' => 'perl-XML-Simple',
+ );
+ for my $module (keys %rhelmodules) {
+ eval "use $module;";
+ if ($@) {
+ my $pkg = $rhelmodules{$module};
+ system("yum install -y $pkg");
+ eval "use $module;";
+ }
+ }
+}
+my $errorsto = 'pere@hungry.com';
+
+upgrade_dell();
+
+exit 0;
+
+sub run_firmware_script {
+ my ($opts, $script) = @_;
+ unless ($script) {
+ print STDERR "fail: missing script name\n";
+ exit 1
+ }
+ print STDERR "Running $script\n\n";
+
+ if (0 == system("sh $script $opts")) { # FIXME correct exit code handling
+ print STDERR "success: firmware script ran succcessfully\n";
+ } else {
+ print STDERR "fail: firmware script returned error\n";
+ }
+}
+
+sub run_firmware_scripts {
+ my ($opts, @dirs) = @_;
+ # Run firmware packages
+ for my $dir (@dirs) {
+ print STDERR "info: Running scripts in $dir\n";
+ opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "Unable to open directory $dir: $!";
+ while (my $s = readdir $dh) {
+ next if $s =~ m/^\.\.?/;
+ run_firmware_script($opts, "$dir/$s");
+ }
+ closedir $dh;
+ }
+}
+
+sub download {
+ my $url = shift;
+ print STDERR "info: Downloading $url\n";
+ system("wget --quiet \"$url\"");
+}
+
+sub upgrade_dell {
+ my @dirs;
+ my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
+ chomp $product;
+
+ if ($product =~ m/PowerEdge/) {
+
+ # on RHEL, these pacakges are needed by the firwmare upgrade scripts
+ system('yum install -y compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 procmail');
+
+ my $tmpdir = tempdir(
+ CLEANUP => 1
+ );
+ chdir($tmpdir);
+ fetch_dell_fw('catalog/Catalog.xml.gz');
+ system('gunzip Catalog.xml.gz');
+ my @paths = fetch_dell_fw_list('Catalog.xml');
+ # -q is quiet, disabling interactivity and reducing console output
+ my $fwopts = "-q";
+ if (@paths) {
+ for my $url (@paths) {
+ fetch_dell_fw($url);
+ }
+ run_firmware_scripts($fwopts, $tmpdir);
+ } else {
+ print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
+ print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
+ }
+ chdir('/');
+ } else {
+ print STDERR "error: Unsupported Dell model '$product'.\n";
+ print STDERR "error: Please report to $errorsto.\n";
+ }
+}
+
+sub fetch_dell_fw {
+ my $path = shift;
+ my $url = "ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/$path";
+ download($url);
+}
+
+# Using ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/catalog/Catalog.xml.gz, figure out which
+# firmware packages to download from Dell. Only work for Linux
+# machines and 11th generation Dell servers.
+sub fetch_dell_fw_list {
+ my $filename = shift;
+
+ my $product = `dmidecode -s system-product-name`;
+ chomp $product;
+ my ($mybrand, $mymodel) = split(/\s+/, $product);
+
+ print STDERR "Finding firmware bundles for $mybrand $mymodel\n";
+
+ my $xml = XMLin($filename);
+ my @paths;
+ for my $bundle (@{$xml->{SoftwareBundle}}) {
+ my $brand = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Display}->{content};
+ my $model = $bundle->{TargetSystems}->{Brand}->{Model}->{Display}->{content};
+ my $oscode;
+ if ("ARRAY" eq ref $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}) {
+ $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}[0]->{osCode};
+ } else {
+ $oscode = $bundle->{TargetOSes}->{OperatingSystem}->{osCode};
+ }
+ if ($mybrand eq $brand && $mymodel eq $model && "LIN" eq $oscode)
+ {
+ @paths = map { $_->{path} } @{$bundle->{Contents}->{Package}};
+ }
+ }
+ for my $component (@{$xml->{SoftwareComponent}}) {
+ my $componenttype = $component->{ComponentType}->{value};
+
+ # Drop application packages, only firmware and BIOS
+ next if 'APAC' eq $componenttype;
+
+ my $cpath = $component->{path};
+ for my $path (@paths) {
+ if ($cpath =~ m%/$path$%) {
+ push(@paths, $cpath);
+ }
+ }
+ }
+ return @paths;
+}
+</pre>
+
+<p>The code is only tested on RedHat Enterprise Linux, but I suspect
+it could work on other platforms with some tweaking. Anyone know a
+index like Catalog.xml is available from HP for HP servers? At the
+moment I maintain a similar list manually and it is quickly getting
+outdated.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
</channel>
</rss>
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