Bricked IPMI on X10SL7-F :(

[Kevin Horton]

I'm looking for advice on possible remedies for an apparently failed IPMI firmware update on a X10SL7-F board on my backup server.

History:

I noted that the IPMI was no longer showing values for CPU Temp and PCH Temp. Both were marked as N/A. Everything else was apparently functioning correctly.

I rebooted the BMC, but that didn't help. I then shutdown the server, and attempted to reflash the firmware (Redfish 3.45, which is the latest version). The reflash reported as being successfully completed, and the IPMI then claimed to be rebooting, but it never came back up. The BMC heartbeat LED on the board showed steady green (i.e. no heartbeat), and this did not change with several power cycles. The FreeNAS server did come back online after several power cycle attempts, so at least that is working normally. But, the IPMI is completely unresponsive, with no light on its NIC, no heartbeat, and nothing found on the network (I've used IPMIView on iPhone to search the network, and I've looked in the router DHCP log in case it switched IPs).

Other than sending the board back to SuperMicro, is there anything else that has a chance of resurrecting the IPMI?

Thanks,

Kevin

Note: while I did search the forums before attempting the IPMI reflash, I missed an X10 FAQ entry that covers the original issue (The CPU/PCH temperatures read N/A).

 

[zoomzoom]

The BMC firmware should be able to be re-written via DOS, however how to do this with SuperMicro boards, I haven't a clue... If the board has a removal BMC chip, I'd also ask SuperMicro for a spare.

• I have an AsRock C2750D4I I had to re-write the BMC firmware to via DOS. AsRock Rack's tech support provided the DOS files, as well as the executable that erased and re-wrote the BMC firmware, and were also nice enough to mail me a spare BMC chip free of charge.
  • One would think SuperMicro offers a similar service since it's overkill to have to mail in the board for a simple BMC re-flash.

 

[Chris Moore]

Not sure about the X10 board, but it isn't a removable chip on my system.
There should be a way to re-flashed that from a dos boot .

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[Kevin Horton]

I'll contact SuperMicro support, and report back once I've got a resolution one way or the other.

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

There should be a way to re-flashed that from a dos boot

I keep a USB stick with FreeDOS loaded on it for just such purposes. Right now it has firmware for several LSI controllers, but I have also used it in the past for BIOS upgrades on my HP servers. Very useful thing to keep in the tool kit.