Downgrade MSL5052 firmware

[clay bowman]

Last week I upgraded my firmware to v507 and have had problems ever since, can someone point me in the direction of downgrading? I have v430 locally but don't know how to get L&TT to use it. L&TT version is 3.5sr2.
Thanks

[Rick Dyson]

You will have to contact support. They will provide you with a "password" that L&TT will require in order to downgrade the F/W on a device it manages. I don't honestly know if this password it unique to a release or what. When they sent me a beta they called it v99.xx, so later when they released it publically as v4.30 I had to get this password since L&TT thought I had a newer release (99 > 4) and would not let me upgrade. :)

I don't have access to that number anymore from here. I find it offensive that we can't control our equipment without their permission, so I would have no problem providing that value if I could find it later!!!

If you don't have a maint contract and they refuse to provide the password, it would really make me mad!

NOTE: If you use the MSL5k utility, I *THINK* I remember that it has no problem uploading any F/W. It does not check whether one is "newer" than another. You just point a file at it. It uses a special serial cable though. You should have gotten one (4-wire phone cord based) with the MSL drive if you got it new...

rick

[clay bowman]

I guess I need to be more basic than what you suggest. How do I get to where a password is asked for? Getting the password isn't a problem.

[Rick Dyson · Accepted solution]

After you have the MSL identified, there is an "Options -> Enable Factor Overrides". After you enter the password, I believe that is what allows the Firmware component to let you select an older version number then what is currently installed.

rick

[clay bowman]

Thanks, that's what I needed to know

[David Ruska]

Clay,

Could you provide us with more details on what issues you had with 5.07 firmware? We'd like to investigate anything were the newer firmware does not operate as well as earlier firmware.

[David Ruska]

Clay, if you remember the specific FSC codes reported by the library with 5.07, that would be good (a library support ticket from LTT would be even better).

[clay bowman]

I had issues where the library and the drives were going off line for no reason in Backup Exec. I rolled the firmware back to 430. However, I did have 1 of 4 of my 110/220 drives that had failed and all of my drives were replaced Friday with 160/320. I can't rule out the drives. I have jobs running now, but I'll post a L&TT support ticket here tomorrow.

[clay bowman]

L&TT attached

[David Ruska]

Clay,

Thanks for the information. The wellness log in the support ticket shows the 5.07 firmware update about 650 hours ago, and then the firmware rolling back to 4.30. There are no errors logged in between. That log should catch hard errors reported back to the host from the library.

There's also a diagnostic trace log (visible only at factory detail level) and it captures FSCs that may or may not be returned as errors. The trace logs are full of event 200F, which is media removal prevented. Typically that happens when the backup application has issued a "prevent media removal" command to the drive or library and the operator attempts to unload the tape from the front panel. It can ALSO happen when another service other than the backup application (e.g. Windows RSM) believes it is managing the library/drives, and issues the PMR command. We see that a lot when libraries are connected to SANs.

The library wellness log did have a few other errors. They happened with 4.24, 4.27, and 4.30 firmware. The errors were all command aborted with "Media load or eject failed". It may be related to the prevent media removal issue.

The reason the drive(s) went offline may be captured in the drive logs, but since the drives were replaced we don't have their logs in this support ticket.

Is the library direct attached SCSI, or fibre attached?

If the library runs stable for a while, perhaps you can try updating to 5.07 again and see if problems reoccur. We can send you a 20 day ltt password in advance so you can downgrade the firmware if there are problems. If we collect a support ticket after a failure, we can compare it against the previous ticket.

I also noticed that your new drives all reported a slight over temp condition about 80 hours ago, and drive 1 had a write errors on one particular tape about 44 hours ago.