Dell iDRAC RED007

So I was updating the iDRAC (version 8) firmware on some servers, and I kept getting stuck on an error. You’re supposed to be able to upload a new firmware’s .exe file and the iDRAC can do its thing to extract the firmware image and update itself… Well, that simply wasn’t working for me. The error I kept seeing was:

RED007: Unable to verify Update Package signature

I of course consulted Google to see what it knew, and it didn’t disappoint. The common reason for this error is that the iDRAC module isn’t aware of the certificates used to sign the ‘new’ firmware you’re trying to apply. (This happens after firmware versions 2.40.x from what my googling would tell me.) The recommended workaround for this is to incrementally step up each firmware version until you get to the newest firmware. As you should, fingers crossed, have the signature certs loaded from each incremental load.

I headed over to the Dell website and downloaded all of the incremental firmware releases that I was missing and tried to try applying them in incremental order. Well, crap…. that didn’t work for me.

After a bit more googling, I found a KB post that talked about extracting the firmware’s .img file from the .exe. Let us try that…

I was able to launch 7zip and then use that to view one of the .exe files I had downloaded from the Dell website. Low and behold, sitting there was a “firmimg.d7” file. I extracted that .d7 file, and attempted to load it into my iDRAC, then attempted to install it…

What do you know… I found that I was able to successfully upload and install that “firmimg.d7” to my iDRAC modules with no issues. That solved that issue!