🧠 Michael Cordell's Brain Dump

SuperMicro Motherboard Maintenance

3 min read

NVME issues

Updating BMC

Flashing BIOS

After many attempts to get the recovery mode to pick up the BIOS file directly from a FAT32 usb drive, I gave up and installed a linux OS to a harddrive attached to the MOBO. With that OS booted, I searched for my motherboard on supermicro’s website and downloaded the BIOS. That zip file contains the SUM (supermciro update manager for various OSes) as well as the BIOS image:

.
├── BIOS_X11SSHG-0958_20240520_2.0_STD.zip <-- Contains BIOS image
├── BMC_X11AST2400-3101MS_20240516_1.71_STDsp.zip
├── sum_2.14.0_BSD_x86_64_20240215.tar.gz
├── sum_2.14.0_Linux_x86_64_20240215.tar.gz <-- Linux SUM utility
├── sum_2.14.0_Win_x86_64_20240215.zip
└── X11SSH-G(T)F-1585(L)_Software_Package_Readme.txt

Unzipping the BIOS zip you can find the image you want:

├── BIOS_X11SSHG-0958_20240520_2.0_STD
│   ├── AFUDOSU.SMC
│   ├── BIOS_X11SSHG-0958_20240520_2.0_STD.bin <-- BIOS image
│   ├── CHOICE.SMC
│   ├── FDT.smc
│   ├── FLASH.BAT
│   └── Readme for UP X11 AMI  BIOS.txt
├── BIOS_X11SSHG-0958_20240520_2.0_STD.zip
├── BMC_X11AST2400-3101MS_20240516_1.71_STDsp.zip
├── sum_2.14.0_BSD_x86_64_20240215.tar.gz
├── sum_2.14.0_Linux_x86_64_20240215.tar.gz
├── sum_2.14.0_Win_x86_64_20240215.zip
└── X11SSH-G(T)F-1585(L)_Software_Package_Readme.txt

Ok, now we can untar this to our root directory and run the sum utility

su -
tar -xvzf sum_2.14.0_Linux_x86_64_20240215.tar.gz -C /root
cp -r BIOS_X11SSHG-0958_20240520_2.0_STD/BIOS_X11SSHG-0958_20240520_2.0_STD.bin /root/sum_2.14.0_Linux_x86_64_20240215/bios.bin
cd /root/sum_2.14.0_Linux_x86_64_20240215/
chmod +x sum

When updating the BIOS it is highly recommended you run it in a tmux session. Run the command1:

root@debian:~/sum_2.14.0_Linux_x86_64$ ./sum -c UpdateBIOS --file bios.bin
 
Supermicro Update Manager (for UEFI BIOS) 2.14.0 (2024/02/15) (x86_64)
Copyright(C) 2013-2024 Super Micro Computer, Inc. All rights reserved.
 
WARNING: BIOS setting will be reset without option --preserve_setting
Reading BIOS flash ..................... (100%)
CPUID = 506e3
Checking ME Firmware ...
Comparing FDT for ROM file and flash.... (100%)
 - Update success for FDR
 - Updated Recovery Loader to OPRx
 - Updated FPT, MFSB, FTPR and MFS
 - ME Entire Image done
FDT is same, Update BIOS and ME(exclude FDT) regions....
Writing BIOS flash ..................... (100%)
Verifying BIOS flash ................... (100%)
Checking ME Firmware ...
Putting ME data to BIOS ................ (100%)
Writing ME region in BIOS flash ...
 - Update success for FDR
 - Failed sending Enable Message to ME
WARNING:Must power cycle or restart the system for the changes to take effect!
root@debian:~/sum_2.14.0_Linux_x86_64$ sudo poweroff

Resetting IPMI password

Download the IPMI utility from supermicro for linux. Boot into linux Run the utility as root

sudo ./ipmi -user list
Maximum number of Users          : 10
Count of currently enabled Users : 1
User ID | User Name        | Privilege Level | Enable
------- | ---------        | --------------- | ------
      2 | ADMIN            | Administrator   | Yes

Reset the password

sudo ./ipmi -user setpwd 2 NEWPASS

2 is the UID from the list above, NEWPASS is whatever you want the password to be

1. Hayden, M. Update Supermicro BIOS firmware from Linux. https://major.io/p/update-supermicro-bios-firmware-from-linux/ (2022).

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