topic iLO network flash recovery state in BladeSystem - General

iLO network flash recovery state

chuckk281 — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:48:35 GMT

Eirik needed to help a customer recover iLO information:

*********************

Hi experts!

I am currently working with a customer escalation where a customer has only iLO-access to certain systems located at undisclosed locations.

Customer has been adviced by HP to upgrade firmware on these servers due to them running very old firmware (that is all I know).

Problem is, he has used VCRM+VCA and also a tool called “HP Lights Out Directories Support Utility” (I’ve never heard of the latter one) to upgrade the firmware, and quite often the firmware fails to upgrade it seems, as he gets “Network flash recovery state” on the iLOs.

In some cases he can alleviate this by running the update again by other means.

Has anyone else seen this happen frequently ?

Only time I’ve ever encounted this flash recovery state was when I tried to upgrade the iLO over WLAN with a crappy accesspoint (I guess packageloss, and that the iLO does not checksum the file).

***************************

Hoa responded:

*************************

iLO Flash recovery procedure

If you are seeing the below message when trying to connect to the iLO interface of your device then the iLO image has become corrupt for some reason and requires recovery:

-<RIMP>

-<MP>

-<INFORM>

The iLO firmware is in a network flash recovery state.

</INFORM>

-<REFERENCE>

Refer to the iLO network flash recovery under the trouble shooting section in the iLO users guide.

</REFERENCE>

</MP>

</RIMP>

iLO Flash recovery:

1. Using an FTP client (or just command line FTP program) connect to the iLO IP address:

ftp 192.168.1.20

2. Login as user flash and password recovery

Name (192.168.1.20:root): flash
331 Password required.
Password: recovery
231 User name accepted.

3. Send the latest ilo binary file to the device:

ftp> put ilo194.bin
local: ilo194.bin remote: ilo194.bin
200 OK.
150 ready to take file.
426 Data Connection: File write error.
2102359 bytes sent in 3 seconds (7e+02 Kbytes/s)

4. Hopefully the ILO will reset itself and recover. If not manual intervention maybe required in which case power of the server completely by disconnecting it from the power for a few seconds and then power back on.

***************************

Have you ever had this problem? How did you recover the iLO info?

Re: iLO network flash recovery state

Gilabert — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 08:39:32 GMT

Hi,

I have tried to do it, and the result is the same like you, but it doesn´t work:

Name (10.166.188.14:root): flash
331 Password required.
Password:
231 User name accepted.
ftp> put /root/ilo193.bin
local: /root/ilo193.bin remote: /root/ilo193.bin
510 command not supported.
Passive mode refused. Turning off passive mode.
200 OK.
150 ready to take file.
426 Data Connection: File write error.
2102427 bytes sent in 2.9 seconds (7.2e+02 Kbytes/s)
ftp>

I think it´s because "426 error". The ILO still does not work.

Any idea?

Gilabert.

Re: iLO network flash recovery state

zeroagemain — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:03:56 GMT

I know this is an old thread, but might be useful for future...

...I think what is missing is a step to put ftp into binary mode;

<ftp ilo-ip>
<u = flash>
<p = recovery>
<bin> or <type binary> <- this was missing
<put /path/ilo2_xxx.bin>

Regards,
Z

Re: iLO network flash recovery state

Brian56 — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:21:20 GMT

I had touse this for iLO1 version and it works well. Only thing I would add is the put command is: "put path\iloxxx.bin" . Thanks.

Re: iLO network flash recovery state

OTTAVI Toussaint — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 14:34:20 GMT

Hi,

Quite old thread but...

Don't try to FTP from a Windows machine, it didn't work for me (nothing happened after the PUT, only "OK" message). Use FTP from a Linux machine. It worked for me.

Re: iLO network flash recovery state

pjdouillard — Thu, 05 Sep 2013 14:25:48 GMT

@OTTAVI Toussaint wrote:
Hi,

Quite old thread but...

Don't try to FTP from a Windows machine, it didn't work for me (nothing happened after the PUT, only "OK" message). Use FTP from a Linux machine. It worked for me.

It works under Windows.

You just have to set your FTP transfer to Binary by typing BIN.

Then, if you want to 'see' if your file is uploading, you need to type HASH.

Then, once the firmware is uploaded, you will see the auto-reprogramming feature kicks in.

But you need to power off the server, and disconnect your ILO cable if you really want to resolve this.

Reconnect your ilo network cable, then power on the server and it should be ok. _should_

P.J

Re: iLO network flash recovery state

01101001 — Thu, 21 Feb 2019 00:51:41 GMT

After a failed firmware upgrade from 2.44 to 2.61, my iLO 4 started showing red error boxes with weird/unreasonable error messages on some of its webpages, so I reset it. Then it went comatose, so I tried ftp from Linux.

'binary' didn't fix the 510 for me at all. I don't think the problem has anything to do with 'binary' or the client OS. Buggy software is buggy software.

Re: iLO network flash recovery state

smcg0908 — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 13:10:57 GMT

I just registered specifically to share my experience with this.

Our company inherited a client with a DL385p Gen8 which had what seemed to be a bricked iLO. The server isn't being used for much nowdays but I figured I'd look into the issue as I had some free time. I could see that the iLO interface was still getting an IP. Upon doing a port scan on that IP, I noticed port 21 was open so that brought me here.

Here's what I did to get it working, using ftp.exe on Windows Server 2012 R2. The username was flash but I had to use flash as the password too, because recovery wasn't accepted.

ftp <ip address>

flash

binary

put ilo4_280.bin

quote RESET

The last command was a complete guess on my part but it forces iLO to reset immediately and eliminated the need to power cycle the server. After a minute or two I could see port 443 was now open and I could get in as normal. It seems the last firmware update in November 2016 had failed and it was out of action since then.