Hi Since quite a while I wanted to update the firmware on my good olde tape drive. However, I do not have any contract all newer HPE downloads require. Searching the web I stumbled over some old messages [1] and [2] from Doug Gilbert which paved the way to easily do such firmware update. I have an EH957A/EH957B HP StoreEver LTO-5 Ultrium 3000 SAS internal half-height tape drive which had the standalone Z64D firmware e.g. reporting the following upon boot (dmesg): [10062376.346530] scsi 0:0:1:0: Sequential-Access HP Ultrium 5- SCSI Z64D PQ: 0 ANSI: 6 ... [10062376.378197] st 0:0:1:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 1 The later message reporting sg3 is important to know for the commands below. The non-paywalled firmware is actually available within some EXE file [3] which may be easily unzipped. Pages 228 and 229 of the HP LTO Ultrium Tape Drives Technical Reference Manual Volume 3: Host Interface Guide, LTO 5 drives [4] talks about how the WRITE BUFFER 3Bh command may be used to update the firmware by first sending it using mode 4 and then initiating the update using mode 5. Luckily, the sg3_utils come with some convenience tools easily allowing to do just that: sudo sg_write_buffer -b 4k -I Z6ED_019_233.E -m 4 /dev/sg3 sudo sg_write_buffer -m 5 /dev/sg3 And - TADA - my drive is updated: [10067140.872255] scsi 0:0:2:0: Sequential-Access HP Ultrium 5- SCSI Z6ED PQ: 0 ANSI: 6 Thanks Doug Gilbert for the usefull insights into SCSI tape drive operation details. Keep up the good work! [1] https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-scsi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/msg69571.html [2] https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/7946871/#17063991 [3] https://downloads.hpe.com/pub/softlib2/software1/sc-windows/p368283668/v124587/cp031432.exe [4] https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E21419_04/en/LTO5_Vol3_E5b/LTO5_Vol3_E5b.pdf Cheers Marcel
