Controller Firmware change from 10.x to 3.x?

Pradeep Chidambaranath posted this 30 October 2016

Hi Stefan,

Thank you for choosing Promise Technology, Inc. for your storage needs.

The 10.x firmware is for MAC version of VTrak unit and 3.x version is for the windows version of VTrak unit. You cannot use a MAC version controller with a Windows version of controller.

Could you kindly confirm the unit serial number?

Stefan Raudonis posted this 30 October 2016

Hi Pradeep,

thanks for the fast answer!

I think the serial of the controller is: M42H09917300199

Why isn't it possible to change the firmware, is the hardware different?

Kind regards

Stefan

Pradeep Chidambaranath posted this 30 October 2016

Hi Stefan,

We may not be able to flash the Windows firmware on a MAC controller. The VTrak x10 unit's controllers are individually designed for MAC version and for Windows version. The MAC version of the controller can only support 2TB drive and the Windows version of controllers can support up to 4TB drives.

Stefan Raudonis posted this 30 October 2016

Hi Pradeep,

o.k. one other small question...

Is it possible to replace the certificate from the controller? I disabled alredy SSL but the login page is still SSL and the certificate is very bad. Because this i must use a very old portable browser to manage the storage...

Kind regards

Stefan

Pradeep Chidambaranath posted this 30 October 2016

Hi Stefan,

It is not possible to replace the SSL certificate for WebPAM. It's a limitation of a very old design. There is no way to update the SSL to a higher level security. You can use the CLI to manage the unit.

Kindly go to the below link to download the product manual and go to page number 165 to know more about Management with CLI

http://promise.com/DownloadFile.aspx?DownloadFileUID=747

Also, you could try to access the the WebPAM with google chrome to see how it works.

Stefan Raudonis posted this 30 October 2016

Hi Pradeep,

on my Mac Chrome i can't open the page, i can only select reload. On my Windows Chrome it works... The IE don't work... Today i used a older Opera portable version to access the storage.

Shure CLI is a option...

Kind Regards

Stefan

Admin

R P posted this 31 October 2016 - Last edited 29 January 2020

Hi Stefan,

If you are going from single controller to dual controller you may need to do more than just add a second controller. If you have SAS drives you will be OK as they are dual ported. But SATA drives are single ported and cannot be used as-is in a dual controller subsystem. You will need to add an AAMUX adapter to each drive so that both controllers will be able to access them.

http://shop.promise.com/index.php?p=product&id=19

The MAC and Channel controllers are physically the same, but MAC controllers come with 2GB of memory standard and the Channel controller comes with 512MB standard. Both controllers must have the same amount of memory or one will come up in maintenance mode.

Also, if you have a MAC Chassis and boot a Channel controller, the controller will come up in maintanance mode. But you can flash MAC firmware from maintanance mode if this happens. The same solution works if you have a Channel chassis and MAC controllers. You can contact TS if you need help, you will need to download the firmware and use the ptiflash command and set up a tftp server. There are several free tftp servers available, I've had good luck with tftpd32.

Stefan Raudonis posted this 31 October 2016

Hi Richard,

thanks for the informations, i have already the mux adapters and i had two additional controllers so i can put one of the 2GB modules to the existing controller. The only thing i need is a battery unit for the second controller.

I will test it...

On thing, do you have the pin layout of the RJ11 serial port? I think i lost the serial cable...

Kind regards

Stefan

Admin

R P posted this 31 October 2016 - Last edited 29 January 2020

Hi Stefan,

I have the pinout, let's see if I have luck inlining an image.

Stefan Raudonis posted this 01 November 2016

Hi Richard,

thank you, this helps me a lot...

I think next weekend i will test again, i write the results.

Kind regards

Stefan

Stefan Raudonis posted this 03 November 2016

Hi,

nearly all is perfect. The cable is correct, and i was able to flash the correct firmware from the loader prompt via tftp. Now the mac controller is running in active active mode with the non mac controller. ALUA is active and VMware shows 4 active path with io.

The only problem, after replacing the memory module, the controller told me that the cache battery can't hold the cache content for 72 hours. The new battery for the second controller reports the same but is still charging, perhaps i must replace the old one too, but the chassy overview is all green.. Only at the back of the chassy, the battery led is orange.

At one place i can see in WebPAM that this is a mac controller, the Boot loader shows "1.02.2270.04 for Mac" in the controller view and the "SEP Firmware" is different:

Richard, thank you for your help!

Kind regards

Stefan

Marco Maria Foschi posted this 10 June 2017

I have bought a Promise vtrak e610f via Ebay, no hard disk inside. The seller doesn't have the administrator password. I have connected via serial cable the controller to upload a new firmware to completely reset the vtrak but the terminal window ask me the administrator password: What can I do to reset the controller and use the webPAM to configure it?

TIA, sorry for my english, Marco.

Venkatachalam Settu posted this 10 June 2017

Hi Macro,

In order to reset the password to factory defaults, you need to flash the confuser image to the controller. Please create a websupport case at support.promise.com and follow the steps below then attach the serial logs to this case, so we can send you the confuser image for the current firmware version of the controller,

-Connect to the unit through the serial console and power on the unit, Here are the settings for the serial port:

Baud Rate: 115200
Data Bits: 8
Stop Bits: 1
Parity: None
Flow Control: None

- Once you logged into the CLI of the Vtrak via the hyper terminal, just re-boot the device and it would display the booting process

- Capture the serial logs generated (copy/paste it to notepad) & reply it to this email and do help us with the call back number and time to assist you with this issue.

We are looking for the below info in the boot sequence which lists the firmware version,

-------------------------------------------------------------
Promise VTrak Command Line Interface (CLI) Utility
Version: 10.xx.2270.xx Build Date: May 20, 2014
------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you.

DR H posted this 02 July 2018

I have bought a Promise vtrak e610f via Ebay, no hard disk inside. The seller doesn't have the administrator password. I have connected via serial cable the controller to upload a new firmware to completely reset the vtrak but the terminal window ask me the administrator password: What can I do to reset the controller and use the webPAM to configure it?

TIA, sorry for my english, Marco.

Did you ever resolve your issue? I'm in the same situation..

Admin

R P posted this 02 July 2018 - Last edited 20 January 2020

Hi Marco,

Below are links to the confuser images for Ex10 firmware versions 3.34 and 3.36.

https://apollocloud.promise.com/share/v3/IfoNaORgQ8Hh7I4OqKOaTtq01p7hkZb3 (3.34)

https://apollocloud.promise.com/share/v3/YYO1tHPrgGIQSOacBXpMUuMTel82uHdt (3.36)

These links will be good for 30 days.

You will need both a serial cable and a network connection. Unfortunatly the web page I used to point too which outlines the process is no longer available, but we can still view it via the wayback machine. This page may take several seconds to build, be patient.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160720172511/http://www.xsanity.com:80/forum/promise-technology/locked-out-promise-vtrak-e610f

To outline the process, first, you'll need a tftp server running on your computer, set the base folder to wherever you have downloaded the confuser file (make sure it is unzipped). Then power-on with Ex10 with the serial cable connected to controller 1, hit ^C until you get to a PBL_RAM prompt, then user the ptiflash to flash the confuser file. If your tftp server is tftpd32, it will tell you the IP of your computer, which you need to use in the ptiflash command. The format is...

ptiflash -t -h <computer IP> -f ex10_confuser_3_36_0000_00.img

Ptiflash will download and flash the image file, I don't recall now whether it automatically reboots or not, if it does not reboot just type 'res' to reset the controller. Be advised that this will also reset all controller settings, users, lunmaps, etc. But it won't affect any arrays or LUNs, the data on the drives won't be touched. So if you do this because you lost the password, you may have to reconfigure controller settings. For the ebay purchase, it's probably not a problem.

DR H posted this 18 January 2020

Hi Marco,

Below are links to the confuser images for Ex10 firmware versions 3.34 and 3.36.

https://apollocloud.promise.com/share/v3/IfoNaORgQ8Hh7I4OqKOaTtq01p7hkZb3 (3.34)

https://apollocloud.promise.com/share/v3/YYO1tHPrgGIQSOacBXpMUuMTel82uHdt (3.36)

These links will be good for 30 days.

You will need both a serial cable and a network connection. Unfortunatly the web page I used to point to which outlines the process is no longer available, but we can still view it via the wayback machine. This page may take several seconds to build, be patient.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160720172511/http://www.xsanity.com:80/forum/promise-technology/locked-out-promise-vtrak-e610f

To outline the process, first, you'll need a tftp server running on your computer, set the base folder to wherever you have downloaded the confuser file (make sure it is unzipped). Then power-on with Ex10 with the serial cable connected to controller 1, hit ^C until you get to a PBL_RAM prompt, then user the ptiflash to flash the confuser file. If your tftp server is tftpd32, it will tell you the IP of your computer, which you need to use in the ptiflash commans. The format is...

ptiflash -t -h <computer IP> -f ex10_confuser_3_36_0000_00.img

Ptiflash will download and flash the image file, I don't recall now whether it automatically reboots or not, if it does not reboot just type 'res' to reset the controller. Be advised that this will also reset all controller settings, users, lunmaps, etc. But it won't affect any arrays or LUNs, the data on the drives won't be touched. So if you do this because you lost the password, you may have to reconfigure controller settings. For the ebay purchase, it's probably not a problem.

R P, Could you upload those files again please? I have the confuser files for one of my MAC Vtraks.. I would like them for the Windows version. I'm not sure if its 3.33, 3.34 or the 3.36. Its in my basement ... as far as instructions... unfortunately I'm all too familiar with locking myself once or twice... Luckily it was while they were fresh installs... lol

Thanks for your time...

Admin

R P posted this 20 January 2020 - Last edited 20 January 2020

Hi DR H.,

Here are the files I have archived. I've added the confuser file for the latest MAC release.

Channel 3.34

https://apollocloud.promise.com/share/v3/EixAkkDbLCuw30ahQiXCuxkz68uMYy1C

Channel 3.36

https://apollocloud.promise.com/share/v3/bHxd1I17Uh1psnQXxoxnMzlJVdtHlgbx

MAC 10.06.2270.00 (last official MAC release)

https://apollocloud.promise.com/share/v3/r6c7lfLoYttpZ6QFvM9eQWoe7SYdIxma

These links should not expire.

EDIT: just noticed you mention 3.33, I happen to have the confuser for that too.

https://apollocloud.promise.com/share/v3/hcnhoDYZb7XB24S9J6YDgmWYlBQIi8yA

DR H posted this 26 January 2020

Oh thats awesome THANK YOU.. I just was sitting here thinking about these files.. So I saved this page and left a link on my desktop... I dont know why I didn't get an email indicating that someone had replied...

These units are getting old.. You must be like me and have files from so long ago, no one needs them.. .but this is the perfect example why we save this stuff... (at least thats what I tell my wife when she asks why the electric goes up when I run my rack of promise vtraks... I need this all this data, dear...).

Thanks again!!!!

Hi Marco,

Below are links to the confuser images for Ex10 firmware versions 3.34 and 3.36.

https://apollocloud.promise.com/share/v3/IfoNaORgQ8Hh7I4OqKOaTtq01p7hkZb3 (3.34)

https://apollocloud.promise.com/share/v3/YYO1tHPrgGIQSOacBXpMUuMTel82uHdt (3.36)

These links will be good for 30 days.

You will need both a serial cable and a network connection. Unfortunatly the web page I used to point too which outlines the process is no longer available, but we can still view it via the wayback machine. This page may take several seconds to build, be patient.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160720172511/http://www.xsanity.com:80/forum/promise-technology/locked-out-promise-vtrak-e610f

To outline the process, first, you'll need a tftp server running on your computer, set the base folder to wherever you have downloaded the confuser file (make sure it is unzipped). Then power-on with Ex10 with the serial cable connected to controller 1, hit ^C until you get to a PBL_RAM prompt, then user the ptiflash to flash the confuser file. If your tftp server is tftpd32, it will tell you the IP of your computer, which you need to use in the ptiflash command. The format is...

ptiflash -t -h <computer IP> -f ex10_confuser_3_36_0000_00.img

Ptiflash will download and flash the image file, I don't recall now whether it automatically reboots or not, if it does not reboot just type 'res' to reset the controller. Be advised that this will also reset all controller settings, users, lunmaps, etc. But it won't affect any arrays or LUNs, the data on the drives won't be touched. So if you do this because you lost the password, you may have to reconfigure controller settings. For the ebay purchase, it's probably not a problem.

Stepan Karandin posted this 14 May 2020

Hi R P

Thanks for you explanations. I made DB9F -> RJ-25 cable and get console access. But have no clue about credentials. I was trying to set jumpers, CMOS battery without success. So the last resort is the file you posted. Unfortunally, the files are expired. Could you help to get it? I've already made an support case but it's EOSL product =(

Hi DR H.,

Here are the files I have archived. I've added the confuser file for the latest MAC release.

Channel 3.34

https://apollocloud.promise.com/share/v3/EixAkkDbLCuw30ahQiXCuxkz68uMYy1C

Channel 3.36

https://apollocloud.promise.com/share/v3/bHxd1I17Uh1psnQXxoxnMzlJVdtHlgbx

MAC 10.06.2270.00 (last official MAC release)

https://apollocloud.promise.com/share/v3/r6c7lfLoYttpZ6QFvM9eQWoe7SYdIxma

These links should not expire.

EDIT: just noticed you mention 3.33, I happen to have the confuser for that too.

https://apollocloud.promise.com/share/v3/hcnhoDYZb7XB24S9J6YDgmWYlBQIi8yA

Controller Firmware change from 10.x to 3.x?

Search

Categories