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Restore Fuel L1 firmware after broken update
It turns out that this combination of -003 motherboard and 1.44.0 L1 firmware renders the system unbootable. Won't respond to power button, verbal abuse, nothing.
Remove the machine's side panel. Somewhere near the SCSI connector on the motherboard you will find an RS232 port, attach a null-modem cable to it.
On the other machine, start a terminal emulator ('cu' works well), set it to 38400 8N1 (e.g. 'cu -l /dev/your_serial_port -s 38400').
As soon as you plug in the power cable on the Fuel, you should be greeted by a prompt:
ALERT: Error reading the display I/O expander, no acknowledge SGI SN1 L1 Controller Firmware Image A: Rev. 1.44.0, Built 07/17/2006 18:19:54 001?01-L1>
The following entries in the log appeared at the time of the update:
09/29/09 21:21:28 L1 booting 1.44.0 09/29/09 21:21:28 vram checksum error - initializing core data. 09/29/09 21:21:28 ALERT: Error reading the display I/O expander, no acknowledge 09/29/09 21:21:28 ** fixing invalid SSN value
If you try to issue a power up command, you will receive this lovely message: Code:
001?01-L1>pwr up ERROR: no power supplies available.
Resetting the NVRAM didn't help, so I decided to boot the other L1 image.
001?01-L1>flash status Flash image A currently booted Image Status Revision Built ----- ------------- ---------- ----- A default 1.44.0 07/17/2006 18:19:54 B valid 1.10.12 02/01/2002 14:40:22 001?01-L1>flash default b
(if your L1 booted from image B, enter "flash default a" instead)
001?01-L1>reboot_l1
After this, everything works normally:
SGI SN1 L1 Controller Firmware Image B: Rev. 1.10.12, Built 02/01/2002 14:40:22 001a01-L1>flash status Flash image B currently booted Image Status Revision Built ----- ------------- ---------- ----- A valid 1.44.0 07/17/2006 18:19:54 B user default 1.10.12 02/01/2002 14:40:22