[rescue] updating PROM w/ something other than Solaris?

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Wed, 26 Sep 2007, James Hartley wrote:

> I've resurrected a U10 which only had OpenBoot 3.25 on it.  What
> information I find on SunSolve states that updating the PROM is not
> OS-dependent.  Has anyone had issues with upgrading the PROM though
> either OpenBSD or NetBSD?

On systems with OS-independent firmware upgrades, you upgrade the
firmware from the openboot prompt, not from inside the OS.

It's been too long since I ran BSD on a U10, but if the bootstrap
program loads the kernel the same way that ufsboot loads the Solaris
kernel, it will work just fine.  The entire upgrade program gets
loaded into memory at once, so if it loads enough to run and give you an
upgrade analysis, the updated firmware code is already in memory, and
cares not what OS you have on the disk.

In fact, you can do the upgrades over the network by specifying the
upgrade program as the kernel and booting the system over DHCP, thereby
doing the upgrade without anything at all installed.

Try copying the *-latest file to the root of your system as
'flash-update', and then try:

         boot disk flash-update

         or

         boot disk /flash-update

Either it'll work or it won't.  Chances approach zero that it'll brick
the box.

-- 
Jonathan Patschke     )  "So far, 99% of illegal activity has been caused
Elgin, TX            (    by criminals."
USA                   )                                    --David Willis