Hi,
I figure I would give you all an update on the problems I had with this
process. After a lot of discussion, IBM has admitted that they have in
fact published incorrect procedures for upgrading the firmware on the
3583 library. If you follow the incorrect procedures it will leave you
library unusable! Furthermore the erroneous procedure was published in
more than one document. I can only speak with certainty to the process
I followed and that it was definitely flawed. I have no idea whether
the other methods are valid or not. I attempted to do a firmware update
via the SCSI bus from an AIX based system using tapeutil. The flawed
procedure neglects to have you open the library for R/W from tapeutil
prior to placing the library in the firmware update mode. Once this
occurs there is no way for the normal user to recover from it, IBM
service most get involved in order to recover from it.
In our situation, the customer did not have support for the library.
3583 maintenance cost are ridiculously high, in fact the yearly cost is
more than what it would cost to purchase a refurbished library! So the
customer was fully willing to take that chance and be down if need be
for a short while. However in this case we felt that IBM was
responsible for the corruption of the firmware (i.e. due to there
published procedures being in error) and that they should provide
support to get it fixed. Well after 2 days of fighting with IBM support
and IBM Global Services we finally got a fix. But what was truly
amazing is that the fix was simply a modified version of the program
used for doing serial cable firmware updates and the running of 3
commands for a total of about 20 minutes of my time! They could have
solved this problem on day one if they would have taken 5 minutes to
send me an email with the program and the 3 commands I needed to run,
but instead IBM must have wasted 50 or 60 man hours discussing it, have
conference calls, pushing responsibility around, deciding who would pay
for it, and a whole lot more crap that I can't even begin to explain.
Bottom line we are backup and running. As a word of caution if you are
going to do firmware updates to your 3583, I recommend using the serial
cable approach. If you can't do that then do it through the RMU.
However, if you feel you must do it through the SCSI interface make sure
you have the correct procedures, i.e. ones that include opening the
library for R/W in tapeutil prior to putting the library into the
firmware update mode. IBM claims they will be removing the bad
documents put I have no idea how long that will take.
I now know more about 3583 firmware updates than I ever wanted to know!
--
Regards,
Mark D. Rodriguez
President MDR Consulting, Inc.
===============================================================================
MDR Consulting
The very best in Technical Training and Consulting.
IBM Advanced Business Partner
SAIR Linux and GNU Authorized Center for Education
IBM Certified Advanced Technical Expert, CATE
AIX Support and Performance Tuning, RS6000 SP, TSM/ADSM and Linux
Red Hat Certified Engineer, RHCE
===============================================================================
Mark D. Rodriguez wrote:
Hi,
I am trying to upgrade a 3583 to the latest (V3_30_08) firmawre from
V3_10_04. I originally tried to do this from an AIX V5.2 system that was
SCSI attached to the library. I tried to do the SCSI upgrade as described
in several different IBM documents. This upgrade timed out and failed
after 10 minutes stating that the connection had timed out. We re-tried
but got the same resuults. Now at this point the library is unusable
since it will not reboot!
I then went on to try to do a firmware update using the serial port. This
requires the use of a windows box. We used a W2K system and attached a
serial cable (basically a null modem cable) between the two. I have had
to do this in the past and it worked, but this time it is failing. The
message returned is:
Received specific board ALIVE.
Error: This download utility is for a IBM 3583 library. You have a
different library.
This is in fact an IBM 3583 but for some reason it will not allow us to do
the firmware update.
If you have any suggestions on how I can at least get the library to boot
up that would be a great help. Further, if you have an idea on how to get
the firmware updated that would be even better.
Thank You.
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