Firmware Maint. 8.20 fails with DL585 G5

[KarloChacon]

just tested

when you got the screen to select booting from HDD or Firmware CD you press F8 you will be prompted to switch to test mode once there press enter and let is run


regards

[Ysin van Gulik]

We sometimes have the same issue.
But we always thought that the quality of the burned CD was the issue.
So we took an USB drive and booted the Firmware CD from that drive.
And that worked for us.

[Jonathan Thorpe]

Hi all,

OK I've just tried the suggestions that have been made on one of the DL585's and still the same result - hangs with a black screen.

Tried booting from a USB DVD drive but that had the same results as the internal TSSTcorp DVD drive.

The most useful was the boot via text mode, I can now confirm that the loader locks up during or immediately after it finishes loading the initial RAM disk ("Loading initrd".

Via USB or internal drive, you get the "Loading initrd" prompt and then several lines of dots (seven I think) followed by a screen flicker and a deadlock.

I've still not had the opportunity to strip back the RAM, CPU's, fibre cards etc as these systems are now moving into production - upto date firmware or not.

[KarloChacon · Accepted solution]

there is a customer advisory about this dated september 15 2008

Advisory: ProLiant Servers with Exactly 64 GB of Memory May Stop Responding While Booting the SmartStart Release 8.10 or the Firmware Maintenance CD Version 8.20

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c01554945&dimid=1046218472&dicid=alr_sep08&jumpid=em_alerts/us/sep08/all/xbu/emailsubid/mrm/mcc/loc/rbu_category_AdvisoryProLiant/alerts

[Jonathan Thorpe]

Well that would be it! Just tried the 'sos' kernel with the 4GB parameter and I've had success, all DL585's have updated successfully.

It took quite a while after hitting enter at the 'boot' prompt (about a minute) before there was any activity but it did eventually boot to the update manager.

And after all of that there was only one update relevant, for the QLogic HBA's!

Many thanks to all that participated in finding a solution.

[Jonathan Thorpe]

Solution as described by Karlo in HP customer service announcement:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=c01554945&dimid=1046218472&dicid=alr_sep08&jumpid=em_alerts/us/sep08/all/xbu/emailsubid/mrm/mcc/loc/rbu_category_AdvisoryProLiant/alerts

[theosmit]

I had the same problem with a DL585 G5 fully populated with 128GB memory. Solution as mentioned above...

Esc to text mode on first screen. type "sos mem=4G" and enter sorted the problem out. The screen did not display much progress at some stage and a little patience is required (1-2 minutes).

Thanks for the pointers guys.