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Mike Halsey article on firmware upgrades/updates ...
40hz:
We've had techs brick a machine several time doing a firmware update to resolve an issue that had nothing to do with the firmware. So I'm in the if it ain't broke, don't fix it camp.
If there is some additional new functionality/capability - That You Need - Okay fine ... That's considered a fix (in my book).
-Stoic Joker (November 27, 2011, 10:10 AM)
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+1 x10^6 !!!
Once again SJ and 40hz are found sitting on the same park bench, passing a bottle back and forth, saying the same things, and wondering why they ever got into this business. ;D
Mike Halsey article on firmware upgrades/updates ...
If it ain't broke - or you don't need it - leave well enough alone.
Especially if it's for 'enterprise' deployment. 8)
Ath:
Reading this thread, it seems to boil down to 1 point: Ask yourself: What's in it for me?
No improvement? No Go. 8)
barney:
He, he, he ... kinda thought it'd go this way. Don't think I've ever met a coder that was not, at heart, a conservative. And there's a lot to be said for that :up:. I won't :Thmbsup:.
db90h:
You need to clearly indicate what type of firmware you are speaking of. In this case, I assume you are referring to PC BIOS updates. Unless there is a bug that is affecting you, I would advise not to worry with it, as they are barely even used beyond the bootup process anymore. It is not like it will make any difference in performance (though perhaps new options it offers could, theoretically). Review updates to see if any pertinent bugs have been fixed though, something that is very rare.
Most modern devices probably have a recovery copy of the firmware to boot from in case of corruption, making bricking of them near impossible, but who knows, I've not checked. The days of bricking things due to firmware updates are definitely going away at some point though, as we have enough extra storage capacity to safely perform updates by always having a reliable backup copy of the firmware to use in case the checksum on the new firmware fails at bootup. In other words, check to see if firmware is valid. If so, boot to it. If not, boot from recovery. On update, only update new firmware. Never touch bootstrap or recovery firmware copy. When we didn't have enough space to store an extra copy, this was an issue, but no such much anymore, at least for properly designed devices.
The above 'recovery firmware' is used by wireless routers and such, for instance, except their recovery firmwares provide only one role: Flashing a proper firmware onto the device.
barney:
You need to clearly indicate what type of firmware you are speaking of.
-db90h (November 27, 2011, 11:31 PM)
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I took the article to mean any [update capable] firmware.
I have on my desk a D-Link paperweight. Long story short; tech support said I needed to flash new system firmware, system lockup during update, system no longer accessible, paperweight.
I had a Panasonic IP camera that [according to support] required a firmware update, applied the update, camera never worked again.
When I worked at MCI, a significant number of failures in the field were due to crashed/improper firmware updates. (A few were tFTP failures, most were not.) We had one (1) support group dedicated, in part, to that very problem.
BIOS updates are relatively simple, usually superfluous unless you've installed some physical element that requires such.
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