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What To Do When an Advised BIOS Upgrade Is Bad?

Posted by timothy on from the wishful-thinking dept.

Bomarc writes "Twice now I've been advised to 'flash the BIOS to the latest,' once by a (major) hard drive controller maker (RAID); once by an OEM (who listed the update as 'critical,' and has removed older versions of the BIOS). Both times, the update has bricked an expensive piece of equipment. Both times, the response after the failed flash was 'It's not our problem, it's out of warranty.' Given that they recommended / advised that the unit be upgraded, shouldn't they shoulder the responsibility of BIOS upgrade failure? Also, if their design had sockets rather than soldering on parts, one could R/R the faulty part (BIOS chip), rather than going to eBay and praying. Am I the only one that has experienced this type of problem? Have you been advised to upgrade a BIOS (firmware); and the upgrade bricked the part or system? If so, what did you do? Should I name the companies?"

17 of 467 comments (clear)

  1. Yes by platypusfriend · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You should name the companies.

    1. Re:Yes by Bomarc · · Score: 5, Informative
      Hard drive RAID controller: by LSI

      System: Dell PE 1950; critical update for the BMC controller.

      ... BTW: EMS firmware upgrade for the BSM V 2.50 bricked two motherboards. The motherboard for system #1 *may* have had a faulty BMC, however system #2 was working perfectly.

    2. Re:Yes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      What's the failure mode on each of {the BMC, the PERC}? I have some experience handling failures of this nature.

      In particular, it's been my experience that on some Dell models of that generation, if you update the BMC firmware without updating the NIC firmware as well, the BMC will fail to be reachable on the network. Fortunately a NIC F/W update fixes this readily enough.

      I wish they told you that.

      [Too lazy to log in.]

    3. Re:Yes by greg1104 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I tell anyone who is considering a serious deployment of hardware RAID that they should buy two of the cards from day one, to have one in a backup server. Then you can run experiments on unrecognized drives or firmware updates on the backup. Also, if something fails on the main server, it increases the odds you'll be able to get to the data if it's still intact. Needing spares around is unfortunately part of the overhead of having this sort of hardware.

      RAID controllers are pretty low volume products compared to a lot of other computer parts. And the problem where a new drive doesn't work with an old controller is depressingly common too. You could just as easily run into this same issue with any other RAID hardware. LSI at least does keep updating things. I have a drawer full of old RAID cards that stopped being useful mainly because the manufacturer gave up on updates.

      Ever since 3ware was assimilated by LSI, there aren't many viable alternatives to them, if you must have hardware RAID. The only good reason to prefer it over software RAID nowadays, where you can move the drives anywhere and read them, is that booting is preserved in more failure cases. It's easy to let the boot area of a software RAID1 volume be mismatched.

    4. Re:Yes by Firethorn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't mean to be a knob but I think the fault doesn't particularly lie with the vendor.

      I view it differently. The vender advised the work. If I called up Toyota and asked advice about something for my 10 year old truck*, while it might be out of warranty if their advice resulted in major damage I think they should be liable for something.

      Your advice seems to be along the lines of 'buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment every year to replace equipment that is still functional solely to keep the warranty up'.

      That's not good for the company's wallet, the environment, etc...

      *Not that old yet, but still

      --
      I don't read AC A human right
    5. Re:Yes by lightknight · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wait, wait, wait. A BIOS flash should (almost) completely erase the BIOS, then reprogram it.

      Are you telling me that some companies use incremental BIOS upgrades? And why?

      This is particularly worrying to me, as I have a SuperMicro L8i SAS controller I just installed in my main machine, and LSI is apparently behind the chipset.

      --
      I am John Hurt.
    6. Re:Yes by MikeBabcock · · Score: 5, Informative

      This is one of the many reasons I order Dell servers.

      One of the others being that their next-business-day 5 yr warranty really means next-business-day.

      --
      - Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
    7. Re:Yes by DES · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I work for an organization that has a large number of Dell servers, all of them with 5-year support contracts: a mix of 4-hour and next-business-day. In my experience, Dell have never, ever, ever solved an issue within the specified period of time. They also frequently refuse to replace failing parts until after they've actually failed (which AFAIK is a breach of the support contract), and they once told me that six DIMMs were a “large order” that would take a week to fill (after I'd already spent a week just getting them to agree that they needed replacing). They simply don't give a shit. I've had far better experiences with HP, but they also far more expensive.

  2. What you're really asking... by Let's+All+Be+Chinese · · Score: 5, Insightful

    is what the legal status of their "recommendations" is and whether you ought to sue them.

    The tried-and-true andwer to that is: Ask a lawyer. I'm quite sure it can and does swing either way depending on local laws and any number of details you haven't provided.

  3. hello, bob! (oblig. xkcd) by sdnoob · · Score: 5, Interesting

    http://whatif.xkcd.com/16/

  4. Do a public service and let us know by Johnny+Loves+Linux · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's been almost 4 years since I built my last box. I'm planning on building another desktop this summer and would like to know who to avoid as I'm intending to purchase a motherboot that's supported by coreboot so I don't have to deal with UEFI. If there's a motherboard vendor doing evil stuff and they're listed I would like to avoid them if I can. Here's the link for supported motherboards: http://www.coreboot.org/Supported_Motherboards

    1. Re:Do a public service and let us know by SCPRedMage · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Corporations are not people; they do not care about you, nor should you truly care about them.

      The only thing corporations are concerned about are their bottom line; if doing something helps them profit, they'll do it. If doing something HURTS their bottom line (such as, oh, I don't know, paying taxes), they'll avoid doing it as best as they can.

      Any example you might provide to prove otherwise is only an example of image control, a calculated effort to improve their standing in the eyes of their consumers.

      Bottom line: report what corporations do. If it's bad, it'll help your fellow consumers avoid being screwed over. If it's good, it'll steer them towards companies that care enough about their image to not be total dickbags.

      --
      My sig can beat up your sig.
  5. Don't fix it if it aint broke by flyingfsck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If it is working, then an "upgrade" cannot make it better. It can only be the same or worse.

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  6. Ummmm, no by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Informative

    That is not at all the case. BIOS/firmware/driver updates/upgrades can potentially do four things for a working system:

    1) Add new features. Many products get new features as their life goes on. My desktop board, an Intel, has gotten a number of new BIOS features during its life. When you update the code that runs something, no surprise that code can add features.

    2) Improve performance. Sometimes, a faster/more efficient way of doing something is discovered. It takes an update to make that happen. I remember a big one back in the day with 3com switches. A firmware update provided a major improvement in through put and CPU usage.

    3) Fix a bug that you haven't hit yet, but could. This is why you'll see updates tagged as urgent. Just because you never hit a bug that got discovered, doesn't mean the bug isn't there. So you want to get it fixed, BEFORE you hit it. There have been firmware updates that fixed some nasty ones, like data corruption with SSDs. Some people never got hit, but that doesn't mean the update wasn't a good idea.

    4) Security issues. Same deal as with the bugs, just a different kind of bug. If a security issue is discovered, it'll take a patch to fix it and the system will be working before the patch.

    The "Don't fix it if it ain't broke," really is not a valid ideology for systems administration.

  7. Re:Consider it a (technology) life lesson by Firethorn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think the most 'robust' anti-brick motherboard I've ever seen had two bios chips - and a hardware switch selecting which one was active. The active one was rendered read-only, you could only flash the inactive one.

    To update the machine you'd flash the inactive, power down the system, flip the switch, power back on and hope it worked*. If it worked, generally you just trucked on on 'B' instead of 'A', in case there was something hidden borked that you didn't find for a while. If the update was borked you simply powered down again and flipped the switch back.

    *Like with any bios update...

    --
    I don't read AC A human right
  8. Good Samaritan Laws by obtuse · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My main concern is this: If the manufacturer gets punished for failing to properly support out of warranty hardware, they'll just stop altogether. Too many manufacturers will already refuse to talk to you about out of warranty equipment.

    Since they tried to help, I'd prefer not to see them punished for this mistake. Think of it like good samaritan laws: They protect a person who stops to offer aid to the injured, from being sued.

    My other thought is that perhaps there was some hidden problem that something in the update triggered. Updates often have new functionality, or may write to memory not used before, so it isn't too hard to imagine them tickling an existing bug. For a car analogy, imagine you bought a used car from a friend and complained that it shook horribly at 75, but since your friend never went over 65 he never noticed when the tires and alignment deteriorated to that point.

    Finally, I'm appalled that they don't make old firmware versions available. That would be the appropriate response to your problem. Hopefully you can find someone helpful who has the old firmware around, either inside or outside the companies. Definitely appropriate for people to be warned that these updates can cause problems.

    --
    Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
  9. It is possible to unbrick! I did it before by leehwtsohg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm too far down for this comment to really matter, but in general, it is possible to unbrick a failed BIOS flash. The reason is that already for some time all (or maybe almost all) manufacturers have two parts of the BIOS - one that gets updated, and a second part that never does, or maybe can't. The second part (actually it is the first), only has very rudimentary software. It can read floppy disks, but not much more than that. The idea is exactly that you can recover from a failed flash.

    That means that to recover, you need to get the right program into a floppy, with the right BIOS on it. You then boot into this special flash mode, which often means pressing some key combination. I've done it on an LE1700 that I bought of e-bay, and I'm pretty sure you can do it on almost any computer.
    In some more modern BIOSes you don't need a floppy, but can do it with a USB stick.
    I'm too lazy to do a thorough search for the exact procedure, but here are two good links that I found:
    http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/dell-mini-10v/18080-how-unbrick-mini-10v-using-floppy-drive.html (this will work also on other computers, I think)
    http://www.wikihow.com/Reflash-BIOS