Automate Retrieving Device Firmware Revisions

[PTBurkis]

Hi There,

I work in a hosting company and we have many clients each with their own backup solution. This means that we have a few hundred HP backup devices. I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to get the firmware revision of each servers directly attached tape drive. Currently, the only way to do it is to run HP L&TT and query the device. This is too manual. I can write a script to get the server to perform some tasks to get this information. But I was hoping there was some form of command line tool that you could use to get the firmware revisions out of the hardware. It does not matter if it retrieves the firmware versions for all devices on the SCSI bus, just as long as the tape drive is one of them. Once I have this data I can work with it.

I have tried running a scan with L&TT and then seeing if i could access the saved information without the device attached. It remembered that there was a device attached, but when you select it, it tries to access the device directly to get the firmware information. It seems that none of this info is logged back to the client.

Any help much appreciated!

[CA713937]

Yes, there is some information saved after LTT is run, Look in the 'misc' folder, and you will find a file called NTMPDevScan.txt.

Here's an example of a system with two autoloaders attached:

2/0.3.0:2/0.7.0:2/0.3.1:0:1:3:HP:Ultrium 3-SCSI:G38W:"\\.\SCSI2:":0:5
2/0.3.1:2/0.7.0::0:8:3:HP:1x8 autoloader:1.46:"\\.\SCSI2:":0:6
2/0.5.0:2/0.7.0:2/0.5.1:0:1:3:HP:Ultrium 1-SCSI:P32W:"\\.\SCSI2:":0:5
2/0.5.1:2/0.7.0::0:8:3:HP:1x8 autoloader:1.40:"\\.\SCSI2:":0:6
2/0.7.0:::0:14:0:Adaptec:SCSI Adapter::"aic78u2":0:0
3/0.0.0:3/0.7.0::0:0:3:SEAGATE:ST336607LW:HPS4:"\\.\PhysicalDrive0":3:0
3/0.1.0:3/0.7.0::0:0:3:SEAGATE:ST373453LW:HPS2:"\\.\PhysicalDrive1":3:0
3/0.2.0:3/0.7.0::0:0:3:MAXTOR:ATLAS10K5_146WLS:HPM7:"\\.\PhysicalDrive2":3:0
3/0.7.0:::0:14:73:Symmpi:SCSI Adapter::"Symmpi":0:0
4/0.7.0:::0:14:73:Symmpi:SCSI Adapter::"Symmpi":0:0

The firmware revision is included. For the Ultrium 3 drive, it is G38W
"HP:Ultrium 3-SCSI:G38W:"

Does that help?

[PTBurkis]

Hi There,

Thanks for the response, however, the information included in my scan isn't quite so useful. For example:

4/0.1.0:4/0.255.0:4/0.0.0:0:1:2:COMPAQ:SDLT320:5252:"\\.\Tape0":3:11:YES
4/0.2.0:4/0.255.0:4/0.0.0:1:1:2:COMPAQ:SDLT320:5555:"\\.\Tape1":3:11:NO

With these SDLT drives, the firmware version is actually V082, but I'm just getting the model type in the scan.

Any more suggestions?

[CA713937]

PRBurkis,

Actually the informaton is there.

Looking at your output:

4/0.1.0:4/0.255.0:4/0.0.0:0:1:2:COMPAQ:SDLT320:5252:"\\.\Tape0":3:11:YES
4/0.2.0:4/0.255.0:4/0.0.0:1:1:2:COMPAQ:SDLT320:5555:"\\.\Tape1":3:11:NO

The "5252" is V82, and the "5555" is V85. Quantum decided to return there firmware revisions in a slightly different format. I believe they encode the servo version and the scsi controller version into one string. The revisions I beleve are in hex, so 52h -> 82, and 55h -> 85.

The LTT GUI does automatically for you, so all you see is the Vxx numbering.

And there is no need to track the servo code seperately from the controller code revisions, since you have to change them both at the same time.

[CA713937]

PTBurkis,

Actually the informaton is there.

Looking at your output:

---
4/0.1.0:4/0.255.0:4/0.0.0:0:1:2:COMPAQ:SDLT320:5252:"\\.\Tape0":3:11:YES
4/0.2.0:4/0.255.0:4/0.0.0:1:1:2:COMPAQ:SDLT320:5555:"\\.\Tape1":3:11:NO
---

The "5252" is V82, and the "5555" is V85. Quantum decided to return there firmware revisions in a slightly different format. I believe they encode the servo version and the scsi controller version into one string. The revisions I beleve are in hex, so 52h -> 82, and 55h -> 85.

The LTT GUI does the conversion automatically for you, so all you see is the Vxx numbering.

And there is no need to track the servo code seperately from the controller code revisions, since you have to change them both at the same time.