Remco Barendse redhat@barendse.to wrote:
Thanks for the tips. I don't know if I'd want an extra partition on all my servers.
Reserving 1-8GB at the front of my server's array volume has saved my bacon so many times -- DOS for firmware upload, vendor diagnostic tool, helper Linux install for recovery, etc...
An alternative idea, create a DOS boot disc with the firmware update, burn that as a bootable cdrom and perform the upgrade.
Assuming you have at least CD-ROM drive. ;-> And sometimes there can be issues with that.
E.g., ServerWorks ServerSet III southbridges were not always well known for their "good" ATA support.
I tried that last week but for some reason the cd didn't boot but that's probably more because I goofed up creating the cd :)
Instead of dorking with all that, I can plop down the dd image. I purposely leave an unused /dev/hda1 of cylinders 1-79 (assuming 255/63 heads/sectors) in case I do need to plop down that dd image. In many cases, I go ahead and set it up anyway -- just in case (leaving /dev/hda2 for any possible Linux install as a "helper" system).
Once it's there, copying over a vendor firmware .com/.exe and other files is a matter of mounting /dev/hda1 as msdos (not vfat ;-), and plopping it. No CD building issues.
And I don't care about the cost of a cd recordable compared to not upgrading the controller
What I care about is the only 5 seconds it takes me to mount the msdos filesystem, copy the vendor firmware .com/.exe and other files, and then unmount versus the minutes to put together a boot CD or USB image.