Firmware Update CD taking 192.168.0.1

[Ugo Bellavance (ATQ)]

Hi,

Is there a reason why the Firmware Update CD binds to the IP 192.168.0.1? One of my firewall interfaces has this IP, and therefore, when someone loaded this CD into a server, many of my users lost connectivity with anything that is on another segment. It really created a big problem for us and it took some time to find the cause.

Thanks,

[Johan Guldmyr]

Had no idea about that!

What version of the fw cd are you using?

[Ugo Bellavance (ATQ)]

9.0.0, but the previous one I used also had this problem.

[Michael Garner_1 · Accepted solution]

Ugo,
You are correct that the Firmware CD binds to address 192.168.0.1. This bind was necessary to prevent a hang during PXE boot in our Linux boot environment we use on the Firmware CD. Without a bind to an address, when the NIC would load and attempt to connect back to the PXE server, the server would hang. To resolve this, we bound the first NIC to the 192.168.0.1 address. Once at least one NIC was bound, the CD would work correctly.

I'm sorry that you have had issues with our use of this address. We picked this address because we felt few people were using it in a production environment and it was a non-routeable address. I'll look and see if we can come up with a different address to use in a future release of the Firmware CD. If you have suggestions, please add them and I'll consider them.

Sorry for your inconvenience,
Michael Garner
HP Firmware CD Architect

[Ugo Bellavance (ATQ)]

Why not use dhcp?

[Johan Guldmyr]

Run a dhcpd on the fw cd? :)

Does the linux dhcp client also set a 169.254.*.* ip when no dhcp server is found? Or does it set 0.0.0.0? Maybe the quad0 also causes issues with the pxe server..

[Ugo Bellavance (ATQ)]

I still don't understand why you need a static IP address anyway, but...

No, not use a dhcpd daemon on the FW update cd, use dhclient to get an IP address using DHCP, or use an IP address from a reserved range (like 169.254.*.* maybe)?

If there is no change, we'll have to disable the ports on every server we want to update, and unassign profiles on blade servers that we want to update?

[sard]

No answers whatsoever apparently... and we're 2012 now, so HP decided to completely ignore this issue. I ran into it last year, apparently I'll have to run into it again in a couple of days. There are plenty of options (allow to set a manual ip at boot, use a 169.x address, use a dhcp client) but HP chooses to ignore them. Frankly, I think it's completely ridiculous that nobody at HP seems to give a **bleep**. I would be happy not to use 192.168.0.1 on the network, unfortunatly that is just not an option.

[Tom Brittain]

This is quite possibly the most idiotic design flaw. It's no wonder your stock is going down faster than the hindenburg. We have encountered this issue SEVERAL times because it likes to bind to the lovely 192.168.0.1 this also JUST so happens to be our default gateway, you can imagine how nice that turns out. To defeat this crap design flaw we always have to make sure these fancy new Gen8 servers aren't connected to the network before updating the firmware unless we want our entire network freaking out. I'm with everyone else on this thread, get a clue and change this setting. If I sound bitter, it could be that anyone asking me why our network just went down and I have to give them the explanation of HP firmware binding to 192.168.0.1 the first response is, "that's stupid, and why would they do that?" Please, for your PAYING customers make the change to prevent this from happening. 

Sincerely, 

Common Sense 

[anthony11]

That seems a bit harsh.  I'm not sure I understand the issue with PXE -- were the image booted via PXE, wouldn't DHCP be providing a real IP address?  Maybe what's really happening is that when it's booted via physical or redirected media it binds to the private address?  Back before I gave up on the firmware DVD I found that I needed to hack and reroll the ISO with a boot-time script modified for a longer DHCP time out for the thing to boot at all.

Between the hassle of taking every system down and connecting media over a home link with limited uplink, having to re-roll each version, the lag of months before new firmware makes it into the ISO, broken cursor, and it insisting on applying updates that I told it not to I gave up on the firmware DVD some time ago and just apply components individually now.