Frequently Asked Questions About System Firmware

A: Firmware is essentially software that is embedded on a hardware device and directly controls it (resets, initializes and configures) before the operating system (for example, the Oracle Solaris Operating System, Linux, or Microsoft Windows) is booted. The firmware is what actually boots the OS, and it is usually contained in some sort of Flash PROM on a system board.

Unlike an OS, which is designed to run on lots of different configurations of hardware and occupies a lot of room (10's or 100's of megabytes) on the disk, firmware is usually space-constrained to a few megabytes (sometimes less than that), so it usually contains only the code needed for that specific hardware configuration. That is why each Oracle Server gets its own separate release of firmware. Firmware specific to one type of server system will usually not function on a different server system.

A: All Oracle Servers ship with firmware already installed on them from the factory. However, like any piece of software, Oracle is constantly improving its firmware over time, even after a system has started shipping. So, yes, there are situations when updating the firmware on your system is recommended. Some of these reasons include:

• Support for new versions of hardware (or peripherals)
• Expanded compatibility and enhancements
• Better reliability and system availability
• Better system performance
• Additional system features
• Security fixes
• Other bug fixes

Often, Oracle Servers might be power-cycled or rebooted only a few times per year, so you might think new firmware is not needed if the current system works fine and the configuration has not changed. If so, then there may be no reason to update your firmware.

A: Today's System Firmware on the SPARC T-Series line of products, includes the virtualization engine (Hypervisor). After the Oracle Solaris OS has booted, the System Firmware is still operating, unlike in the past with OBP, which did little after the OS was booted.

The Oracle VM Server for SPARC (LDoms) virtualization feature depends on the Hypervisor running in the System Firmware and the Oracle VM Server for SPARC Manager software to operate, in addition to requiring the latest improvements at the Oracle Solaris OS level. The virtualization feature sets in Oracle Solaris are closely tied to the corresponding releases of the Hypervisor in System Firmware. Along with new features you also get bug fixes and performance improvements. If you need to update or patch your Oracle Solaris OS, then you should also be upgrading your System Firmware.

A: Every Oracle Server System Firmware release includes a patch README file that describes what changes have been made in this firmware release. The README will contain a standard header area, and also the following sections of note:

• BugId's fixed with this patch:
  This section includes a full list of all bugs associated with the base patch-ID, starting from the -01 version. The bugs are usually sorted in numerical order to make them easier to scan through.
• Changes incorporated in this version:
  Bugs listed here are a subset of the "BugID's fixed with this patch" and include only the bugs delivered in the latest dash-roll of the base patch-ID.
• Problem Description:
  This section also lists the same bugs from the "BugID's fixed with this patch" section, except they are broken out by the dash-roll increments and also they are listed one bug per line with the Synopsis included.
• Special Install Instructions: This section will include a series of Notes, some of which are standard for Oracle System Firmware, such as:
  • Firmware component revisions included with this release - lists the release version and all component versions.
  • Advice on compatibility with the Oracle VM Server for SPARC (LDoms) feature.
  • Pointer to any Open Source components.

It is recommended that you always review these Notes before installing the System Firmware on your server.

A: There are two answers to this question. First, the number of bug fixes is higher for Oracle Server System Firmware than some older server systems because the firmware itself has far more functionality than prior systems, as noted above. The more functionality, the higher the bug fix count is going to be, on average, from release to release.

Second, Oracle System Firmware uses a common source base for all of the SPARC server systems. The Bugs Fixed list in the README for a given system will include bug fixes that are specific to that system, as well as bug fixes that are known to be relevant to more than one (or all) systems, and as the number of supported systems grows, the number of shared bugs grows as well. It is impractical to fully describe the relevance of each bug fix to a given system, so we list all bugs that are either known to be relevant or otherwise in known common code, under the theory that more disclosure is better than less. That said, we do exclude bug fixes known to be specific to a given system from the README list of all other types of systems.

Firmware is available for download from My Oracle Support under the Patches and Updates tab. Use the Product or Family (Advanced) Search to enter in your Oracle Server name into the Product field and then hit the Search button. You will be required to have a valid Oracle Support contract or Hardware Warranty before being entitled to obtain access to firmware updates. More information on Oracle Hardware Systems Support Policies is available from Oracle.

As of October 2015 and the release of Solaris 11.3, platform firmware updates for selected SPARC server systems are now available in the Oracle Solaris IPS support repository in addition to the .zip file downloads from My Oracle Support. Installing or updating the firmware IPS packages delivers files to /var/firmware/system/server-type but does not automatically update the server's firmware. You still need to perform the manual steps as per the instructions in the README file.

To identify the firmware update packages for your platform, use the following command:

You can use the pkg contents and pkg info commands to get more information about the firmware packages for your platform.

For more information about the pkg list, pkg contents, pkg info, pkg install, and pkg update commands,. For more information about firmware updates, see Oracle ILOM Feature Updates and Release Notes Firmware Release 3.2.x .

A: This is an often misunderstood concept! The term "patch" has dual meanings:

• In the Oracle Solaris OS, a "patch" is a way of changing a small section of a release, without replacing the whole thing.
• A "patch" is also just a term for describing any update that is delivered through the My Oracle Support site.

So, while all Oracle Solaris patches are delivered with a patch-ID as an identifier, not all patches deliver things that are actually Oracle Solaris patches. In fact, a patch could be a simple text file with a favorite cake recipe (to use a silly example). There is no limitation on the type, number or purpose of "thing" released by a given patch-ID.

So, in the case of Oracle Server firmware, each release is a complete, self-contained and fully functional image that completely replaces the image being upgraded. There is no such thing as a partial upgrade when it comes to Oracle Server firmware. Thus, for each separate firmware release, Oracle packages up a zip file, including a README, various legal and documentation support files, the complete binary replacement image, and often the Oracle Solaris utility used to download the release to your target system. Oracle never releases anything less than a complete fully functional firmware image, so the first definition of "patch" listed previously has no meaning for Oracle Server firmware.

A: The Install.info file included with each firmware release provides information on how to determine what firmware component revisions are installed on your Oracle Server.

A: Oracle provides firmware patches for downloading at the My Oracle Support site. You will be required to have a valid Oracle Support contract or Hardware Warranty before being entitled to obtain access to firmware updates. More information on Oracle Hardware Systems Support Policies is available from Oracle.

A: SunSolve Patch-IDs consist of a 6-digit number followed by a dash and a two-digit number ( XXXXXX-YY). The 6-digit number is the base number of the patch, and the two-digit number (-YY) is the revision of that patch. Each new Patch-ID always starts with version -01.

A: This table summarizes the current releases of firmware for Oracle SPARC systems.

You can also search the My Oracle Support Patches and Updates tab and in the Patch Search window use the Product or Family (Advanced) search for your Oracle system's Product name and available Releases. There might be several different firmware patches available for a particular system. For example, the Sun Fire T2000 server has had multiple firmware minor releases (6.1.x, 6.2.x, 6.3.x, 6.4.x, 6.5.x, 6.6.x and 6.7.x). Each of these 6.x minor releases is given a unique patch-ID number and each 6.x.y micro release becomes a subsequent revision of the patch.

Here is an example of the available firmware patches for the Sun Fire T2000 system:

• Patch 139434-01 System Firmware 6.7.0 (current patch revision of the 6.7.x minor release)
• Patch 136927-03 System Firmware 6.6.7 (current patch revision of the 6.6.x minor release)
• Patch 127576-03 System Firmware 6.5.11 (current patch revision of the 6.5.x minor release)
• Patch 126399-02 System Firmware 6.4.6 (current patch revision of the 6.4.x minor release)
• Patch 124750-08 System Firmware 6.3.12 (current patch revision of the 6.3.x minor release)
• Patch 123482-03 System Firmware 6.2.6 (current patch revision of the 6.2.x minor release)
• Patch 122430-06 System Firmware 6.1.13 (current patch revision of the 6.1.x minor release)

The Oracle System Handbook and the Oracle Solaris OS Hardware Compatibility Lists (HCL) also provide some information on available firmware patch updates for your Oracle Servers.

A: You can always upgrade to new firmware, but downgrades are not guaranteed. Whether they work or not depends on whether your system's hardware configuration and the rest of the software stack (the Oracle Solaris OS, patches, and so on) have any dependencies on your newer firmware. If there are dependencies and you downgrade, you might find yourself unable to even boot. So in general, downgrades should be avoided unless you know for sure your compatibility matrix is verified. Also, it should be obvious that downgrading might cause you to lose features or functionality. For example, LDoms 1.0.1 requires System Firmware release 6.5.x. Downgrading to 6.4.6 would break LDoms functionality.

The instructions for flashing the new firmware onto your system are contained in the patch Install.info file. The system needs to be powered off to flash update the firmware.

A: Prior practice, as noted in above FAQ's, was to release System Firmware patches in a similar form to what was used for Oracle Solaris 10 content. System Firmware patches were distinguished with Patch ID's of the form 123456-01. Starting with the release of System Firmware 9.0 on T5 and M5 server systems, Oracle will release this firmware via standard 8 digit Oracle Patch identifiers used by MyOracle Support.

What has changed:
SPARC T5/M5 Firmware patches will now use native MyOracle Support (MOS) patch numbering. These numbers will be unique for each incremental release, unlike before where the base Patch ID (e.g., 123456) remained the same for a given series of MINOR release versions while the 2 digit patch revision number would be incremented for each new release.

The MOS release identifications are improved. The searchable Product is the hardware platform name, but now instead of always only seeing a single 1.0 Release which contained ALL of the released patches for that platform (which was hard to search and filter), now each type of Release will be searchable. For example, previously for the Product "SPARC T4-1", a search would return just a single Release "SPARC T4-1 1.0". Now the search for the Product "SPARC T5-2" will show all of the Release types, including System Firmware, HW Programmables and LSI Firmware. You will be able to filter your searches on MINOR releases (e.g., 9.0, 9.1, etc.) as they are released.

The Platform name is now "Generic Platform", instead of the redundant and inaccurate "Oracle Solaris on SPARC (32-bit)" and "Oracle Solaris on SPARC (64-bit)".

The README file for the Oracle System Firmware Release has been simplified and is now in HTML format.

The Top Level directory of the downloaded MOS Patch has changed slightly. It now includes a new Firmware subdirectory where the actual firmware binary objects and related metadata are located, along with associated installation instructions and tools for this hardware platform. The content is largely identical to the old firmware patch release content.

The format and content of the Oracle System Firmware .pkg file is unchanged along with the sysfwdownload utility used to load it onto your platform.

A: The SPARC T5 and M5 platforms have introduced a new capability to update the "hardware programmable devices" (such as FPGA's, SEEPROM's, etc.) that are accessible via the Service Processor. Previously, these updates were just done in manufacturing, and Service would replace the affected board if needed in the field. However, enabling the updates in the field without swapping hardware can provide a clear benefit in terms of faster response time and shorter down-time.

To support this capability, Oracle has created a new class of firmware releases called "Hardware Programmables", and they will be visible on MyOracle Support under that name. Hardware Programmable releases will be associated with each supported SPARC platform via a separate downloadable patch from the usual Oracle System Firmware updates. Hardware Programmables releases are not accumulative in nature. Each available Hardware Programmables version may provide updated functionality to independent hardware components. Customers need to determine which Hardware Programmable versions might be applicable to their platforms, and then install what they need to have updated.

It is important to remember that there are also other types of firmware, in addition to the Oracle System Firmware, and they will be released separately from these new HW Programmables releases.

A: The SPARC M7 and T7 platforms have introduced a new capability to boot from non-local root storage pools on iSCSI devices. The Fallback Boot image is a small version of the Oracle Solaris OS, called a miniroot, that is stored on one or more service processors. The SPARC M7 and T7 servers are preconfigured with Fallback Boot images. If the non-local root storage pool is unavailable during boot, the fallback boot process is used to reconfigure the root device location.

During the fallback boot process, once the kernel from the miniroot is loaded, the root device is configured. This configuration includes a pointer to the location of the root pool on the iSCSI device. Next, the root pool is imported and the boot archive is loaded into retained memory. The system is then rebooted from the boot archive and the boot process repeats, starting with loading the kernel. However the kernel in the second boot is from the boot archive, not from the miniroot in the fallback image.

The Fallback Boot firmware image is updated regularly to stay in synch with the latest supported releases of Oracle Solaris 11.3. Customers should regularly update the Fallback Boot firmware images to stay in synch with the version of Oracle Solaris that is running on their M7/T7 series servers.