Concepts
All computers have a BIOS.
Supermicro has something in addition called the Baseband Management Controller (BMC). This allows low level access to the underlying hardware and do smart things like see the screen of the hardware even when there is no screen. You can also remote reboot a machine using the special web interface.
In the perfect world you want to upgrade both the BMC and the BIOS.
Steps to determine your board version:
sudo dmidecode -s baseboard-product-name
Next to go the correct URL, e.g.:
https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X10SLM-F
On the right you can download the latest BMC, e.g.:
https://www.supermicro.com/en/support/resources/downloadcenter/firmware/MBD-X10SLM-F/BMC
Save to the file. When you extract it, look for something called Redfishxxxxx.bin.
Access the IPMI via it’s IP address. There is a seperate network card on the Supermicro for this and you can set the IP address to fixed or DHCP in the BIOS menu. The default username and password for IPMI is ‘ADMIN/ADMIN’, all uppercase.
Upload the file and wait.
BIOS Update
Download sum for Linux:
https://www.supermicro.com/en/support/resources/downloadcenter/smsdownload?category=SUM
Make sum executable:
chmod +x sum
Examples of sum use to update two different types of Supermicro motherboards:
./sum -c UpdateBios --file x10slm1.308 ./sum -c UpdateBios --file x10sl71.310
See also
- https://kb.vander.host/operating-systems/how-to-determine-bios-version-bios-date-and-model-product-name-of-a-computer-using-ubuntu/
- https://kb.vander.host/disk-management/how-to-mount-a-usb-disk-on-freebsd/