Technical data

4-8 Fabric OS Administrator’s Guide

Publication Number: 53-0000518-09

Maintaining Firmware

Table 4-3 Effects of Firmware Changes on Accounts and Passwords

For more details on older releases of Fabric OS, refer to “Understanding Legacy Password Behavior”

on page D-1.

Considerations for Downgrading Firmware

The following items must be considered before attempting to downgrade to an earlier version of

Fabric OS:

• If your fabric is set to the extended edge PID format and you want to downgrade to an older Fabric

OS version that does not support extended edge, you must change the PID to a supported format.

For more information, refer to “Configuring the PID Format” on page A-1.

• Downgrading a SilkWorm 24000 that is configured for two domains from Fabric OS v4.4.0 to

Fabric OS v4.2.0 is not supported.

• If you are running v4.0.2 firmware on a SilkWorm 3900, you cannot downgrade to earlier versions.

Considerations for FICON CUP Environments

To prevent channel errors during nondisruptive firmware installation, the switch CUP port must be

taken offline from all host systems.

Upgrading SilkWorm Switches

SilkWorm 200E, 3016, 3250, 3850, 3900, 4012, and 4100 switches maintain primary and secondary

partitions for firmware. The firmwareDownload command defaults to an autocommit option that

automatically copies the firmware from one partition to the other.

You should not override autocommit under normal circumstances; use the default. Refer to Appendix F,

“Upgrading Firmware in Single CP Mode” for details about overriding the autocommit option.

Change First Time Subsequent Times

(After upgrade, then downgrade, then

upgrade)

Upgrading Default accounts and their passwords

are preserved.

User-defined and default accounts and

their passwords are preserved.

Downgrading User-defined accounts are no longer

valid. Default accounts and their

passwords are preserved. If a default

account was disabled, it is reenabled

after the downgrade.

User-defined and default accounts and

their passwords are preserved, including

accounts added after the first upgrade.

Upgrading to

v3.2.0

(You might upgrade a switch in the fabric as part of “Checking Connected

Switches” on page 4-6.) Earlier versions allowed you to change the default

account names. You cannot add user-defined accounts until you change the names

back to default with the passwdDefault command.