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How do you handle firmware updates on headless boxes?

Dedicated Servers by bellaauc 4 replies 137 views
bellaauc

Member OP

3-2-1 Believer

#1

Bricked my IPMI last night updating "blind"—BMC went unresponsive, no KVM, had to schedule a datacenter visit. $150 later I'm functional but furious at myself.

How do you all handle this? My current broken process:

  • Download vendor "update bundle"
  • scp to /tmp, run blindly
  • Cross fingers, ping after 10 min
  • Panic when ping fails

Did you test your restore? I didn't. The 3-2-1 rule applies to firmware images too—keep old BIOS + BMC versions locally. I had nothing.

What's your actual workflow?

3-2-1 or you're already dead
admin

Administrator

Administrator

4 #2

Structured approach for my fleet at Vultr:

  • Vendor tools only (Supermicro SUM, Dell DSU) via internal mirror
  • Staging box with identical board—flash there first
  • Maintenance window with NOC on standby
  • IPMI SOL console logged to persistent buffer

Dry humor: I once worked with a "test in production" advocate. They now follow the checklist.

— Admin

sudo make me a sandwich
annexbi

Member

4 #3

(vendor tools) (ha) (you mean the ones that (half the time)) require GUI or (worse) Windows-only executables (nested (like this (I found one that needed))) ActiveX in 2025

My actual workflow is (ironic given my username) ssh in and hope (then write the ansible playbook) (after it breaks)

push. done. coffee.
olya

Member

Always Free

#4

Pro tip: Oracle Cloud free tier ARM instances make perfect staging targets for BMC behavior testing. Not identical hardware, but you can validate vendor tool chains.

Heads up: IPMI firmware often has rollback protection now. Numbered steps for safety:

  • Dump current firmware via `ipmitool raw` or vendor CLI
  • Verify checksum against vendor DB
  • Flash with `-noreboot` flag if available
  • Force BMC warm reset, not cold

Never update blind again.

licensing is a suggestion
haroldgsm

Member

Grumpy Old Sysadmin

#5

Back when IPMI was called "BMC" and we had serial ports that actually worked, none of this nonsense existed. Kids these days with their redfish APIs and still bricking boxes.

20 years in this business. I've scheduled more datacenter visits than you've had hot dinners. 30% of you voting "datacenter visit"—mark my words, that percentage rises as you age. The young ones think remote is forever.

Pessimistic prediction: vendor tools get worse, not better. Closed-source blobs with no rollback.

IPv4, IRC, and irssi — fight me

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