Flashing the firmware on ILOM based Solaris Systems

This post illustrates how to flash the firmware on an ILOM based Solaris System. It is most important to keep up to date the latest firmware on your systems for many reasons e.g. bug fixes, better performance and generally getting the most out of your Solaris System.


Pre-requisites 
Make sure you have the latest version of the firmware you wish to deploy on to the systems (you 
can do this by logging into My Oracle Support and making sure the zip file is not obsolete, Oracle will give you the option to download the latest zip file). 
Make sure you have network connectivity to your ILOM console via ssh as this is used to flash the firmware once the patch has been added to the system. 
Make sure the zip file has been transferred over to the system in question (for e.g. ssh copied or using ftp). 


Procedure
Log in to your system as root and unzip the patch into a directory of your choosing 


# unzip [patch].zip
# cd [patch] 


There should be a few files in the directory such as README files and licensing etc. The files we are after sysfwdownload and the [image].pkg file which is the firmware image we intend to flash. Make sure you are in the directory of the patch by using the “pwd” command and execute sysfwdownload using the firmware image as an argument: 


# pwd
/path/to/patch/directory
# ./sysfwdownload [image].pkg


Once the download completes successfully the command prompt will return upon completion, 
shutdown the Solaris machine (run level 0) (NOTE: MAKE SURE YOU HAVE SCHEDULED DOWNTIME)


# shutdown –i –g0 –y 


Log in to the ILO vis ssh or serial and run the poweroff command to turn the server off. It would be much better if you have the ALOM compatibility shell enabled for this part of the procedure, to make a user with the ALOM shell, execute the following:


create /SP/users/admin role=Administrator cli_mode=alom
Creating user... 
Enter new password: 
Enter new password again: 
Created /SP/users/admin 


sc> poweroff 
SC Alert: Host system has been shut down 
Set the keyswitch to normal position before flashing the firmware: 
sc> setkeyswitch –y normal 
sc> showkeyswitch 


Finally, flash the firmware using the below command: 


sc> flashupdate –s 127.0.0.1 


Once the flashing procedure is complete the SC will reset, however if it does not, run the following command: 


sc> resetsc 
User Requested SC Shutdown


Wait for the SC to come back online then power on the system:
sc> poweron


Done!