Dell PowerEdge Firmware Update Problem on CentOS

I was recently upgrading some old Dell PowerEdge R610 servers. Obviously, this process includes installing the latest BIOS firmware. So, here is the problem…

The system was running CentOS 6.0 x86_64 and I was using the simple manual installation as shown below…

[root@somewhere ~]# cd /tmp
[root@somewhere tmp]# chmod +x PER610_BIOS_LX_3.0.0.BIN
[root@somewhere tmp]# ./PER610_BIOS_LX_3.0.0.BIN
Dell Update Package 6.5 (BLD_131)
Copyright (c) 2003-2010 Dell, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Release Title:
Dell Server BIOS 11G, 3.0.0

Release Date:
February 03, 2011

Default Log File Name:
R296031

Supported System(s):
PowerEdge R610

Description:
PowerEdge R610, BIOS, 3.0.0

Supported Device(s):
Server BIOS 11G

Fixes / Enhancements:
* Updated the embedded 5709 UEFI driver to version 6.2.0
* Added Support for Dell Lifecycle Controller 1.5

Important Device Information:
* Do not run other applications while executing Dell Update Packages.

* The software contained in a Dell Update Package for Linux is an aggregate of third party
programs as well as Dell programs.  Use of the software is subject to designated license terms.
All Software that is designated as "under the terms of the GNU GPL" may be copied, distributed
and/or modified in accordance with the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License,
Version 2, June 1991.  All software that is designated as "under the terms of the GNU LGPL"
(or "Lesser GPL") may be copied, distributed and/or modified in accordance with the terms and
conditions of the GNU Lesser General Public License, Version 2.1, February 1999.  Under these
GNU licenses, you are also entitled to obtain the corresponding source files by contacting Dell
at 1-800-WWW-DELL.  Please refer to the Open Manage Open Source DVD.  There may be a nominal fee
charged to you for the physical act of transferring a copy.

* If the following error occurs, "Error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot
open shared object file: No such file or directory", you must install the compatibility libraries
from the vendor OS repository or from the OS installation media. 

  [ ... omitting ... ]

Page notes with 'less', press 'q' to continue DUP exec;

However, after pressing ‘q’ to continue with the installation, it failed like this:

Collecting inventory...
....
Running validation...

BIOS

The version of this Update Package is newer than the currently installed version.
Software application name: BIOS
Package version: 3.0.0
Installed version: 1.3.6


Continue? Y/N:Y
Executing update...
WARNING: DO NOT STOP THIS PROCESS OR INSTALL OTHER DELL PRODUCTS WHILE UPDATE IS IN PROGRESS.
THESE ACTIONS MAY CAUSE YOUR SYSTEM TO BECOME UNSTABLE!
....
The update failed to complete

[root@somewhere tmp]#

After extracting the “PER610_BIOS_LX_3.0.0.BIN” shell script’s contents and running it in debug mode I saw that it was failing while attempting to read the contents of ‘/etc/redhat-release’ file which in CentOS 6.0 is just this:

[root@somewhere tmp]# cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS Linux release 6.0 (Final)
[root@somewhere tmp]#

So, my attempt was to make it look more like the equivalent RHEL one.

[root@somewhere tmp]# cp /etc/redhat-release .
[root@somewhere tmp]# echo "Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.0 (Santiago)" > /etc/redhat-release

And just run the script again…

[root@somewhere tmp]# ./PER610_BIOS_LX_3.0.0.BIN 
Dell Update Package 6.5 (BLD_131)
Copyright (c) 2003-2010 Dell, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Release Title:
Dell Server BIOS 11G, 3.0.0

Release Date:
February 03, 2011

Default Log File Name:
R296031

Supported System(s):
PowerEdge R610

Description:
PowerEdge R610, BIOS, 3.0.0

Supported Device(s):
Server BIOS 11G


   [ ... omitting  ... ]


Running validation...

BIOS

The version of this Update Package is newer than the currently installed version.
Software application name: BIOS
Package version: 3.0.0
Installed version: 1.3.6


Continue? Y/N:Y
Executing update...
WARNING: DO NOT STOP THIS PROCESS OR INSTALL OTHER DELL PRODUCTS WHILE UPDATE IS IN PROGRESS.
THESE ACTIONS MAY CAUSE YOUR SYSTEM TO BECOME UNSTABLE!
...............................................................................................................................................................
The BIOS image file is successfully loaded. To apply the BIOS update successfuly, the OMSA data manager service is stopped. Reboot your system to complete the update. Do not shutdown, cold reboot, power cycle, or switch off your system before the BIOS update is complete.  Restart your system for the update to take effect since the update will be incomplete until you reboot the system.
Would you like to reboot your system now?
Continue? Y/N:Y

Broadcast message from root@somewhere
	(/dev/tty1) at 18:32 ...

The system is going down for reboot NOW!

And guess what?
It worked! :)

Anyway, I hope this will be useful to some people that got stuck on the same problem.

The same issue also arises with ‘update_firmware’ utility and it can be resolved using the above trick. Finally, after the installation is completed you can restore the original ‘/etc/redhat-release’ file.

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