CentOS - Feb 2013 - Dell unofficial community repository - what do you think?

Hi all.

I am currently gathering information about firmware update on Dell
PowerEdge machines.
I've found
http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Firmware-tools_announcement
and
https://linux.dell.com/repo/community/
It is an unofficial, community supported repository.

What are your experiences: should I perform firmware updates the
traditional way by downloading *.bin packages from Dell and run them
manually or should I use this repo? Is this repo "safe" and releases
stable packages?

Best regards,
Rafal Radecki.

> What are your experiences: should I perform firmware updates the
> traditional way by downloading *.bin packages from Dell and run them
> manually or should I use this repo? Is this repo "safe" and
releases
> stable packages?
 
 This is a good resource:
https://lists.us.dell.com/mailman/listinfo/linux-poweredge.

 Personally, I prefer the repo over both .bin packages and Lifecycle controller
 updates. However, there are sometimes problems with the repo, in particular
 after new releases. The mailing list is the canonical place for reporting,
 and it is monitored by Dell employees.

 The best possible scenario is a local mirror of the repository, but I
haven't
 yet figured out how to configure machines to use it; not sure whether yum or
 httpd config is the problem.

On Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 1:57 PM, Rafa? Radecki <radecki.rafal at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> I am currently gathering information about firmware update on Dell
> PowerEdge machines.
> I've found
> http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Firmware-tools_announcement
> and
> https://linux.dell.com/repo/community/
> It is an unofficial, community supported repository.
Depending on your hardware you will have support here:
http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware
http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Repository/hardware

I create a local mirror via rsync and use for all the Dell servers.
> What are your experiences: should I perform firmware updates the
> traditional way by downloading *.bin packages from Dell and run them
> manually or should I use this repo? Is this repo "safe" and
releases
> stable packages?
I'm usually fine with the hardware repo above unless I need something
really new (some versions that's not yet released in the firmware repo
as rpms).

--
Mikael