I mounted an SUU (Server Update Utility) dvd on a debian etch blade today and poked around it. ‘autorun.sh’ started X (over ssh to my ubuntu desktop) but the window was all white, although I did get a normal looking exit yes/no prompt when I closed it.

running ‘suu -u’ from the command prompt worked fine (mount the cd with a full mount /dev/device /mnt otherwise you risk inheriting ‘user’ from fstab which can muck with permissions).

It ran three times and each time wanting to reboot. After the third time I checked the log and found:

/var/log/dell/suu# cat update.log
Wed Apr 16 16:55:36 PDT 2008  PE1955_BIOS_LX_1.4.2_1.BIN – reboot required to complete update
Wed Apr 16 16:55:37 PDT 2008  PE1955_FRMW_LX_R168472.BIN – reboot required to complete update
Wed Apr 16 16:55:37 PDT 2008  PE1955_ESM_FRMW_LX_R158506.BIN – update successful
Wed Apr 16 17:04:51 PDT 2008  PE1955_BIOS_LX_1.4.2_1.BIN – reboot required to complete update
Wed Apr 16 17:13:29 PDT 2008  PE1955_BIOS_LX_1.4.2_1.BIN – reboot required to complete update

OMSA confirmed that the BIOS is v1.0.0. Apparently the BIOS upgrade isn’t taking but ‘omreport storage controller’ confirmed that the PERC firmware took, which is what I cared about the most. I assume if the BIOS update took it’d stop asking me to reboot.

That was all more painless than I expected.