If you want to upgrade just the bios, you can save yourself time and read through to the FreeDos part and just do that as it turns out. FFS.
To save some other poor sod of doing the rounds like I did and especially finding out you can't use the Lifecycle Controller to update anything because Dell have shutdown the ftp site. Thanks Dell.
My OS installed is Proxmox (Debian 12).
Having trawled the web trying to find one of the myriad ways of updating the bios to 6.6.0 (since my existing one is 2.1.9 or something) and been stunned at how difficult this seems to be (either documented approaches don't work or have partial info on steps):
- Grab the ISO that Allen Sansell has mercifully created and shared - a Linux Smart Bootable ISO. See here https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/sysxo0/dell_poweredge_firmware_isos/
- Install Rufus from https://rufus.ie/en/# on the PC.
- Put a USB drive (>=4GB) in the PC.
- Run Rufus and select:
- Device: your USB
- Boot Selection: Disk or ISO... and select the ISO you have just created
- Persistent Partition size - smallish just in case - 8GB
- Partition scheme: MBR
- Legacy boot settings (just in case)
- Label of your choice
- FAT32
- Click Start
- When that finishes, take the USB stick and put it in one of the front USB slots of the server.
- Reboot the server (I used System > Power > Power Control > Reset System (Warm Boot) from Idrac6 Enterprise) and during the boot sequence press F11 for the Boot Manager (my console access was via the Virtual Console within iDrac6).
- When the Boot Manager comes up, choose Hard Drive (C: > Front USB - which makes no sense). Then select Bootable ISO (option 1 in my case)
This will start Linux from the ISO and after an interminable amount of time (like, a really really long time) I noticed that the console was fozen, reporting 0.0fps)
(one strange thing is that there is a failure relating to a udev job running and something fails but since this is a self-contained ISO, I can't imagine that's an issue)
But, relaunching the console again from iDrac and it seems to have completed but on reboot, only the Lifecycle Controller has been upgraded.
So I rebooted to the USB ISO again and this time it did the BIOS upgrade - or rather it said it did - but on reboot it is still 2.1.9 after a warm reboot.
Ok - so cold reboot time - still says 2.1.9 and so booted into USB ISO yet again and it says "yep - bios 6.6.0 installed successfully"
I beg to differ: another cold reboot and yet again, the bios is not updated.
Then came across this post:
So I need to get the non-packaged bios update an run from a boot shell or something.
Everywhere it says hit F11 and go into System Utilities BIOS Update File Explorer - except that System Utilities does not exist. Maybe it's in System Services? That takes forever and starts the Unified Server Configurator and... of course it's not there.
This video gave me a clue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATJVWHfQsY8
I created a FreeDos bootable USB in Rufus (overwriting the one above). In Rufus:
- Choose FreeDos as the type of bootable media to create
- Don't Select any files
- Click Start to get what I imagine is a bootable USB
Go and get the non-packaged BIOS file here:
https://dl.dell.com/FOLDER05012911M/1/R610-060600C.exe
and copy it to the root of the FreeDos USB drive you have just created, but name it something like UPDATE.EXE to fit with the DOS naming conventions.
Put the USB drive in a front USB slot of the server and reboot. F11 and select it again - this time you will get a Dos prompt. Just run UPDATE.EXE there and reboot
My BIOS is now 6.6.0!!!!!
Never mind that all my USB drives from a USB3 PCI-E card are not recognised - the Proxmox OS boots up OK and I will deal with that later.
I am not sure this is a process as such - more like the IT equivalent of hitting it with a hammer until it works.