[TUTORIAL] Update Samsung consumer SSD/NVME firmware in Proxmox

[cwt]

This is a short tutorial how to update the firmware of Samsung's consumer SSD/NVME drives in Proxmox.

!! CAUTION !! Upgrading firmwares is always a risk!

Before proceeding, make sure

- to backup your VMs which are located on the target drive(s)
- stop all your VMs/LXCs which are located on the target drive(s)

If Proxmox VE itself is located on the drives be sure to backup your configs and anything else which is important to you!

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Determine current firmware versions with DC Toolkit V2

To get an overview of all installed SSD/NVME firmware you can use the DC Toolkit for Linux V2.

URL: https://semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/support/tools/

Direct Link: https://download.semiconductor.sams...sources/Samsung_SSD_DC_Toolkit_for_Linux_V2.1

Installation & usage

Login via shell to your PVE. Within the /root directory (or any other directory of your choice) download the DC Toolkit:

wget -O ssdtoolkitv2 https://download.semiconductor.samsung.com/resources/software-resources/Samsung_SSD_DC_Toolkit_for_Linux_V2.1

Make it executable with

chmod +x ssdtoolkitv2

List all SSD/NVME drives with

./ssdtoolkitv2 -L

The tool will detect and list all drives including model, serial no., firmware, capacity, drive health and TBW. It's possible to update the firmware with the DC Toolkit but you'll need the appropiate .BIN file which is encrypted in the ISO files.

To manually decrypt the firmware from an ISO, take a look on this Python script at GitHub:

URL: https://github.com/chrivers/samsung-firmware-magic

There's another script available ion GitHub which decrpyts the .BIN file directly from the downloaded ISO:

URL: https://gist.github.com/Zibri/3b3c34c3ce36ec6c6f57618eeda6f200

It needs 7zip which can be installed with

apt install p7zip-full

Place the script in a directory of your choice and make it executable with

chmod +x sfwd2.sh

Usage:

./sfwd2.sh <Name-of-your-downloaded.iso>

It will automatically extract and create these files:

DSRD.bin, DSRD.magic, SVTXXXX.bin (<-- the decrypted firmware file) and SVTXXXX.magic

With the appropiate .BIN file available, you can update the firmware with the DC Toolkit.

For a complete set of instructions take a look on the official manual:

URL: https://download.semiconductor.sams...-manual/Samsung_DCToolkit_V2.1_User_Guide.pdf

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Firmware upgrade with ISO files from Samsung

Step 1

Login via shell and create some temporary directories.

From the root directory we'll use /temp as the base folder:

mkdir -p /temp/{iso,fwupgrade}

Now you should have /temp with "iso" and "fwupgrade" as subfolders.

Step 2

Open the URL with Samsung's firmware and copy the download link (ISO file) for your drive(s).

URL: https://semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/support/tools/

In this example, we'll update the 990 Pro firmware.

CD into your /temp dir:

cd /temp

wget https://download.semiconductor.samsung.com/resources/software-resources/Samsung_SSD_990_PRO_4B2QJXD7.iso

Step 3

Mount and unpack the content of the ISO file:

mount -o loop ./Samsung_SSD_990_PRO_4B2QJXD7.iso /temp/iso

cd /temp/fwupgrade

gzip -dc /temp/iso/initrd | cpio -idv --no-absolute-filenames

Step 4

Within /temp/fwupgrade you should see the following folders:

bin dev etc init lib lib32 linuxrc media mnt opt proc root run sbin sys tmp usr var

CD into /temp/fwupgrade/root/fumagician

cd /temp/fwupgrade/root/fumagician

and start the firmware upgrade process by

./fumagician

Do not run the fumagician.sh, it will only reboot your PVE.

Follow the steps in the update utility. It will automatically detect your drives and offer an upgrade. If everything worked well be sure to reboot your Proxmox VE so that the new firmware gets active. To be absolutely sure, power off your host and switch it on again after a few seconds.

The /temp dir can be removed after the reboot.

Hope this tut helps.

Cheers

 

[Wasca]

Does this process of installing the ISO have to be run on the NVME drive that you intend to update or just the drive that Proxmox VE is installed on? I have a secondary Samsung 990 NVME drive that will eventually have my VM's on that I want to be able to update also.

 

[Wasca]

How can you check the currently running firmware version on each of your Samsung NVME drives before upgrading?

 

[cwt]

Does this process of installing the ISO have to be run on the NVME drive that you intend to update or just the drive that Proxmox VE is installed on? I have a secondary Samsung 990 NVME drive that will eventually have my VM's on that I want to be able to update also.

If you download and run the ISO for the 990 NVME it will detect ALL installed drives of this type. You can choose which drive shall be updated. To check which firmware is installed use the DC Toolkit V2. I made an update in the tutorial in the first section about this.

 

[aliis.jh]

Just tried performing this on Proxmox v8.4.10 and the `fumagician` would scan, find the disk, but upon continuing would just exit immediately (like less than 1 sec.)

Found this comment (askubuntu.com) that mentioned `funmagician` requires `unzip` be installed. After an `apt install unzip`, I reran `funmagician` and it performed almost the same, except at the last step after final prompt, it took longer to exit, maybe 5 seconds or so (almost felt like it didn't work again.) However, now after a reboot, the drive showed the updated firmware version.

Also, FYI, I had to install `xxd` to complete the earlier steps in the guide as I received an error about it not being installed.

This update was on the primary storage drive used by Proxmox. So can confirm the update can be performed live without needing to boot to USB for offline update.