I want to update the BIOS on my two servers with Supermicro boards (X10SRH-cF and X10SL7-F). I've downloaded the 3.0a BIOS for each of these boards, and if I understand the directions correctly, I 'simply' need to copy the contents of the expanded zip files onto a bootable USB stick. Do I need to add an OS such as FreeDOS, or are the contents of the BIOS zip from Supermicro all I need? How would I create a bootable USB stick using macOS 10.13? All the info I've found so far assumes you want to use an ISO to make a bootable USB stick, so they point to tools like UNetbootin. I've tried using diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk3 MBR MS-DOS X10SL7F 0b at the CLI in macOS, but Disk Utility says the resulting USB stick is not bootable. How large a USB stick do I need? I've got some ancient 64MB ones that I'd like to use for this, if possible. That is way more than the size of the expanded BIOS zip archives. I'm sure the info I need is buried in this forum somewhere, but my Google-fu isn't strong enough to find it. This free USB media creation tool for Windows 10 and Mac can create USB Bootable media from ISO files devices with different settings like partition schemes, Cluster size, and file system. Thanks for any pointers. The only Windows computer I have easy access to is my work laptop. I can't use Rufus on it, as Rufus refuses to install without Admin privileges, and I don't have those on that computer. I tried using an ancient Windows 7 VM in VMWare Fusion on macOS, but Windows 7 blue screens every time I try to use Rufus to create a bootable USB stick. So, I tried UNetbootin on macOS. It claims to work, and creates a bootable stick with FreeDOS on it. I copied the various BIOS files to the root of the USB stick, stuck it in the FreeNAS server, and booted. It boots in FreeDOS, showing an 'A: >' prompt, but DIR shows no sign of the BIOS files that I put on that stick. I see 'DRIVER' and 'FREEDOS' directories, but there is no obvious way to find and run the Batch file to do the BIOS update. What am I missing? I'm over the hump, I hope. It seems that I need to switch from the A: drive to the C:, by doing C. Then, a dir shows the BIOS files. I have no understanding of how a single USB stick gives me both an A: and a C: drive, but that isn't relevant to the problem at hand (BIOS update). I first tried option 2 at the FreeDOS boot menu (Safe Mode with No Drivers), but an attempt to flash the BIOS would fail with '[PMODE/W]: Not Enough Memory Available!' Option 5 (Live CD) seems to work - at least the BIOS flash is in progress as I type this. Well, that was a 'fun' experience. Yesterday evening, I finally got over the hump with the BIOS update, as described above. I watched on the IPMI console as the BIOS update proceeded. ![]() ![]() It finally gave a 'Success.' Message, then nothing happened for a long, long time. I pondered whether this was really the end of the BIOS update, and finally decided that it must have finished.
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March 2019
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