USC Freezes

Guillermo_Sandoval,

Make sure to remove the power leads from the system then put them back in and let power initialize the DRAC before powering on.

If the Drac is not given time to do this the USC will not function properly.

M@l

Hi!

I have exactly the same problem with my PowerEdge R710. I wanted to perform a complete firmware upgrade. I upgraded the iDRAC Enterprise 6 firmware first via the web interface. Then booted into the USC (F10) to perform the rest of the upgrades from Dell's FTP site. Several upgrades and reboots went well (server BIOS is now at 3.0.0, drivers and lifecycle manager are at latest versions), the rest of the upgrades didn't go through, most notably net, diagnostics and power.

Upon one of the reboots, however, the server stalled at the "Entering System Services... Starting Unified Server Configurator" dialog as you presented for like 1 hour. I powered down the machine using iDRAC and powered on again, but same thing happened. I did a DRAC reset via the web interface, but nothing changed.

I was able to cancel subsequent reboot in USC using the iDRAC configurator, but my question is what's going on here? Is my USC now hosed? How to restore it and carry on the rest of the upgrades? How did you solve the problem in the end?

I didn't try to disconnect the system from power completely because it requires an on-site visit :-(

Thanks!

Just to follow up on my case. I've got USC restored via iDRAC using the USC repair packages. I experimentally determined that the only ROM that wouldn't cause my R710 to stall upon upgrade is v1.3. Versions 1.4, 1.5, 1.2 and 1.1 all have the same symptoms.

I didn't try to re-initialize DRAC by unplugging the power yet, since I requires an onsite visit.

Ok, the site visit didn't help. When I upgraded USC to 1.5.0 using BDF_1.5.0_BIN-25_A00.usc, the server reboots and then gets stuck after I press F10:

Is it a case for motherboard replacement or what?

Hi!

> Once the reseat, and removal of any additional hardware is done,

> then perform the repair a second or third time.

There was no additional hardware installed into this server. It is just as it was delivered by Dell.

As I said, I've tried the package that you linked already and even made an onsite visit to disconnect and reconnect the power cords as suggested earlier in this thread, but it still gets stuck in the same way when I press F10 on boot.

I have also tried LC_APP_LX_R296663.BIN and it installs successfully, but then gets stuck again in the same way. Right now I'm looking at the same picture for 15 minutes already.

How many times shall I repeat the procedure that you described until it supposed to work?

Z.

I had a similar deal like this with an R210 ( might have been R200) where it would hang at same point, Since mine was a tester I was not worried about anything, and got it to work by unplugging the Ethernet cables from the back and rebooting and pressing F10 to try again, worked fine, then I plugged them back in to connect to dells repository. Not sure if this was normal or will help you, but worth a shot

Well, trying to pull the cables out is another onsite visit, but I doubt it's gonna work, because it doesn't even start loading USC, actually. On the picture from the topicstarter you see the white stripe at the bottom of the screen. On my picture it doesn't even appear... :-(

By now I did 3 more recoveries with exactly the same effect: it does not work.

Any further ideas? I will try to recover to 1.3.0 again, which proved itself to work previously.

Rather than going onsite, go into the bios and disable all the nics. if you have any storage cards like h800, logically disconnect the external devices.
Its normal to flash devices via the USC and then reboot and go into the USC, but it shouldnt hang for long. I have seen where if you have ALOT of luns attached to the system, USC will choke while trying to load.

 Oh, and to prevent the system from starting system services, during bootup. press cntrl E to go into the idrac, then choose cancel system services, your system should then boot into OS normally.

Hi! Thanks for this helpful suggestion. I have an H200 and I actually don't have any LUNs attached at all, so I'm not sure if this could be my problem. Still, I'll give it a try sometime later, since it actually doesn't require an onsite visit...

Hi!

a. 48G, 4 x X5680 CPU

b. 2 x 2T SATA drives slot(3) / slot(2), additionally, there is a 100G SSD slot(0), they are all attached to a H200I (SAS2008 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 [Falcon])

There is a built-in 82801IB (ICH9) 2 port SATA IDE Controller, to which I think only the DVD-ROM is attached.

c. In /var/log/dmesg I could find the following:

mpt2sas0: LSISAS2008: FWVersion(07.15.04.00), ChipRevision(0x02), BiosVersion(07.00.01.00)

d. Unfortunately I can't remember if this firmware was upgraded in the process or not, but I don't think so. I also don't remember what was the initial version of the USC on board, but I think it was 1.4. Then upon my first upgrade to 1.5 via USC itself it locked up as I described and subsequently after I tried all possible versions only 1.3 was found to work.

e. I think N/A.

f. I don't have "System Services" in my iDRAC. I do have System -> Properties -> System Inventory and it is indeed displayed now, even though right now USC is at version 1.5 and doesn't load.

Couple of questions for you, I'm working on a hypothesis, but need information about your system to confirm.

a. how much ram is in the system?

b. how many hard drives are attached to the H200

c. what fw version is your H200 running

d. was the H200 fw changed before or after the USC started to hang?

e. bonus points will be awarded if you can tell me the previous H200 firmware version.

f. in the idrac configuration utility, under system services, is  your "collect system inventory on Restart" enabled or disabled?

Just to put an end to this story: I have recently upgraded the iDRAC to the latest version and then decided to give latest USC a try (1.5.1 RFU). After flashing through iDRAC I powered off the server, unplugged the cord, re-plugged the cord and it finally worked!

The latest 1.5.1 update did the magic trick and it all works now. Never mind it took just about a half a year to figure out.

Hey, I've been having a similar issue. There's no OS installed and I'l trying to update the firmware and Bios. The system halts every time I try to load USC. The original config was 2 processors, 64 GB. I've completely removed the second processor and 32GB.. Nothing.... Oh  I also removed all Hard Drives. I'm a new System Admin but not new to IT. I could really use someones help... I can't figure out why it wont boot.

Which model system do you have and what are your bios/idrac and LC versions right now?

7 years later your advice still helps people. Thank you DELL for not letting us relax our brains! Much fun