[ltp] Cisco firmware again

[Fabrice Bellet]

Hi,

On Fri, Jan 30, 2004 at 04:14:58PM -0800, Karl Klashinsky wrote:
>       * To update firmware under Linux, you can use ACU.  There may be a
>         way to do it from the command line, too, dunno.
>       * I seem to recall reading _somewhere_ that Fabrice didn't
>         recommend using his driver to update the firmware, but instead,
>         manually load the Cisco driver in order to do firmware updates.

Yep. I confirm. Please please please, do not flash your firmware under
Linux with airo_mpi + ACU. I had the report of someone who toasted his
card a few months ago, while trying this dangerous operation. When the 
flashing code fails, the card is dead. So I disabled this possibility 
in my recent patch, but older versions still allow it. 

The safe solution is to use ACU under Windows. This solution works fine, 
and is supported by Cisco, so please use it :-)

It should also be technically possible to flash the firmware under linux 
with the cisco linux driver (mpi350.o) + ACU, but if your new firmware is 
not compatible with the cisco driver (ie > 5.00.01, 5.00.03 or 5b00.08),
you won't be able to flash it again under Linux. Because the linux version
of ACU requires that the cisco linux driver is loaded during startup, and 
the cisco linux driver won't load with an unsupported firmware.

So really, Windows ACU is the only way to flash safely your firmware.

Best wishes,
-- 
fabrice