The easy way to update Dell servers.

If you’re reading this post you’ve likely been through the same battles I have;

Use the dell lifecycle controller to just update via FTP.

Use a flash drive inside the lifecycle controller or network shares.

Use Dell repo manager to do it yourself.

Bollocks to all that, none of it ever works properly. The FTP never works at all and anything else is just making stuff too complicated so here’s what you do.

Go here, in fairness to Dell they do give multiple workarounds but it would be nice to just have one port of call. Click on the model you need to update and download the newest update ISO they have – they should all have isos located at dell.box.com.

Download Rufus, and burn the ISO to a new flash drive.

Take down your hypervisor, or whatever you’re running and reboot, hit f11 to check boot options then boot from the new flash drive.

All going well, this will work just fine for you. However, usually this doesn’t go just fine and indeed has never worked for me, apply_bundles.sh is invalid.

If you get that error message hit alt + f2 to open a new shell and lets get started.

lsblk to show all drives, find the one that resembles your flash drive – check the storage sizes. It will likely be sdb1, sdc1 etc.

mount /dev/yourdevice /opt/dell/toolkit/systems
cd /opt/dell/toolkit/systems/drm_files
./apply_bundles.sh

You might have to reboot and run it 2-3 times, usually it updates everything for me first time. If the screen goes black - don’t do anything - just wait, it just takes a while.

Enjoy.