Re: HMC OS upgrade - 740 to 770

I watch the getupgfiles command run. If it cannot verify the signatures of the files it complains. If it doesn't complain then it succeeded. One of my upgrades on Tuesday did in fact complain as the bzImage file somehow was damaged moving it to the FTP server and needed to be retransmitted before getupgfiles would succeed.

As to the failure: Depends on the failure.

Some of my customers put the 'magic chip' (I forget the name) to allow remote console of the HMC through the service processor. With that you can watch the remote upgrade and restart it etc. Unfortunately if it requires media to be installed for example to recover from backup then you'll need someone there with fingers.

So my rule for such HMC upgrades is that if the HMC is mission critical to the enterprise then at least one of these must be true: A) There are two HMCs. Upgrade only one at a time. or B) I'm on site for the upgrade.


- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com
www.iInTheCloud.com

On 12/11/2013 4:12 PM, Steinmetz, Paul wrote:

Bryan or Larry,

1) How do you confirm if the getupgfiles command is successful.
I know you can watch the files download in /hmcdump, but when complete, /hmcdump is empty.
getupgfiles -h ftp.software.ibm.com -u anonymous --passwd ftp /-d /software/server/hmc/network/v7350

2) How do you handle remotely if the upgrade hangs, I had to force power off the HMC.

Thanks
Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of DrFranken
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2013 3:12 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: HMC OS upgrade - 740 to 770

I haven't done an upgrade with media in some time, always use the network images. This process works marvelously and saves me a lot of mileage. Did two of them yesterday one from V7R7.4.0 and one from
V7R7.3.0 up to V7R7.7.0.2 with no issues. Both were hours of drive time away from me so the network is the way to go.

I do have one system with V7R7.8.0 running but the network upgrade to that did fail and I had to reload from DVD media.

Interesting thing about V7R7.8.0 is that DVD RAM is no longer a valid backup target.

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com
www.iInTheCloud.com

On 12/11/2013 2:30 PM, Steinmetz, Paul wrote:

To all,

I just completed an HMC OS upgrade, 740 SP2 to 770 SP 2.
The first upgrade failed, I tried using the images downloaded from IBM directly to HMC.
Something was either missing or one of the images was corrupted.
Did anyone ever have a successful upgrade from media downloaded from IBM to HMC.

As a back up solution, I burned the HMC recovery disks from my PC, these iso downloaded ok.
Followed section 2 of Scratch install of HMC from Recovery CDs.
Then Restore upgrade data from USB.

Everything back to normal, and upgraded to latest, 770 SP 2.
78 is out, but not recommended by HMC folks until next year.

Also applied latest firmware, AL 740 121, will be doing a platform IPL Monday night to apply all firmware.


Thank You
_____
Paul Steinmetz
IBM i Systems Administrator

Pencor Services, Inc.
462 Delaware Ave
Palmerton Pa 18071

610-826-9117 work
610-826-9188 fax
610-349-0913 cell
610-377-6012 home

psteinmetz@xxxxxxxxxx
http://www.pencor.com/

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