Best way to update bios/firmware on HP DL380 Gen9?

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NateS

Active Member
Apr 19, 2021
159
91
28
Sacramento, CA, US
Hi all, I recently picked up my first HP server, a DL389g9. I'm trying to update the bios in preparation for upgrading from V3 to V4 CPUs, but it's turning out to be surprisingly difficult.

I downloaded HP's service pack, which is theoretically bootable from a USB stick, but I haven't managed to make that work -- depending on how I write the .iso to the USB, I either get a "failed to mount root" error when booting, or no option to boot from it at all. And HP's USB stick writing utility doesn't detect my USB sticks at all.

The service pack can also theoretically be used to install the firmware from within the OS, but it seems it requires either Windows or an RPM-based Linux, and at the moment I'm running Ubuntu Server on there. If it's the fastest or only way, I could install something else temporarily if needed, but I'm hoping there's a better way.

Lastly, I also tried through the iLO-4 web interface, but it wants just the binary firmware file, not the whole package. For some reason, HP requires a support contract (which I don't have) to download the bios file alone, but the full package that contains it is freely available, go figure. If I could figure out how to extract the right binary from the .iso, then the iLO update would probably work, but I'm not even sure what I'm looking for, and there's a lot in there.

Does anyone have any suggestions of what's the best way to get this bios update done? I think my options are 1) find a way to get the .bin to update through iLO, or 2) find a way to get the server to boot from the service pack .iso, or 3) bite the bullet and install Windows or something that can use RPMs and try HP's online update. I'd appreciate any input from HP wizards of which approach is going to be most likely to work.

Thanks in advance!
 

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
1,394
511
113
If you've got the SPP, you can browse through the ISO structure and find the bare files needed for at least the iLO upgrade. Last time I looked there was an XML file in there somewhere which'd map package descriptions and versions to filenames.

If I'm remembering correctly the iLO .bin files are stored within files with a .fwpkg extension or something similar. If you open these up in a tool like 7zip or similar you should see a .bin file sitting in them along with a couple of metadata files that you don't need; you can then feed that directly in to the web interface.

Perhaps it doesn't exist any more (been a while since I dealt with the tin directly) but you used to be able to extract the ISO to you workstation and have it launch a slightly shonky web interface that you could point at an OS or an iLO interface and it'd automatically probulate the right packages and firmware updates to install.
 
Jun 22, 2015
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For SPP you need to use a HPE utility to write the spp to a bootable usb key in a windows laptop: Software Details | HPE Support Center
Another way is use a small bootable drive to install redhat 8.3 on it and then mount the iso file and execute the script when you run rh8.3.
I have used both methods and in the end I found that keeping a redhat os installed is more handy for this purpose. I also regularly run ubuntu server on the hp machine. It's very easy to change boot order in ILO without going into BIOS setup.
 

seang86s

Member
Feb 19, 2013
164
16
18
Why not just mount the .ISO as virtual media thru the iLO and boot off of that? During post, hit F11 for the boot menu and select iLO virtual media.

If you go into Intelligent Provisioning you can also upgrade the firmware as long as the server has an internet connection. Truth be told, upgrading firmware via IP has always been hit or miss for me. More often than not, it would fail. SPP mostly always worked.
 

NateS

Active Member
Apr 19, 2021
159
91
28
Sacramento, CA, US
If you've got the SPP, you can browse through the ISO structure and find the bare files needed for at least the iLO upgrade. Last time I looked there was an XML file in there somewhere which'd map package descriptions and versions to filenames.

If I'm remembering correctly the iLO .bin files are stored within files with a .fwpkg extension or something similar. If you open these up in a tool like 7zip or similar you should see a .bin file sitting in them along with a couple of metadata files that you don't need; you can then feed that directly in to the web interface.

Perhaps it doesn't exist any more (been a while since I dealt with the tin directly) but you used to be able to extract the ISO to you workstation and have it launch a slightly shonky web interface that you could point at an OS or an iLO interface and it'd automatically probulate the right packages and firmware updates to install.
Thank you for this! The XML was the clue I needed to make sense of all the numbered .scexe and .fwpkg files. Unfortunately, it looks like the SPP did not have the binary form of the package that could be used through iLO -- it had an entry in the XML, but no file associated with it. And when I eventually found via google what the .scexe package would have been called, it wasn't in there.

For SPP you need to use a HPE utility to write the spp to a bootable usb key in a windows laptop: Software Details | HPE Support Center
Another way is use a small bootable drive to install redhat 8.3 on it and then mount the iso file and execute the script when you run rh8.3.
I have used both methods and in the end I found that keeping a redhat os installed is more handy for this purpose. I also regularly run ubuntu server on the hp machine. It's very easy to change boot order in ILO without going into BIOS setup.
You know, this isn't a bad idea. It looks like all the HP utilities assume red hat, so now that there's a free version, I may as well keep one around. I also noticed the server has an internal bootable microSD slot that I wasn't otherwise planning to use, so I think I'll throw a copy on there.

Why not just mount the .ISO as virtual media thru the iLO and boot off of that? During post, hit F11 for the boot menu and select iLO virtual media.

If you go into Intelligent Provisioning you can also upgrade the firmware as long as the server has an internet connection. Truth be told, upgrading firmware via IP has always been hit or miss for me. More often than not, it would fail. SPP mostly always worked.
Unfortunately, mounting ISOs via iLO seems to require an upgraded iLO license which I don't have.


Eventually, I found where someone is hosting this (and a lot of other server) firmware online, so I was able to download the version that could upload through iLO directly. It's here for anyone else who needs it: mirror.plusserver.com