I have not tried to roll back an idrac 9 to those versions, but if you have already stepped thru a few versions from 7.x to 4.x, I highly suggest you pull power cords on the system, then retry the downgrade. While a reset to defaults should ideally completely reset the idrac, it is my opinion that a power pull clears its memory and allows for a clean bootup of its code, especially after multiple fw changes. 

Rey
#Iwork4Dell

Hello thanks for choosing Dell and welcome to our community.

May I ask why you are trying to downgrade?

I'm wondering your issue may be related to this:
https://dell.to/3LXhhr4

Symptoms
iDRAC9 firmware cannot downgrade/rollback to iDRAC9 firmware 4.40.10.00 or older after updating to the June 2024 iDRAC9 firmware release. While the firmware downgrade job may reflect a successful status, the Lifecycle Log records a RAC0181 informational event on iDRAC9 reboot. This limitation is introduced in the following iDRAC9 firmware releases:

14G PowerEdge Servers: 7.00.00.172
15G PowerEdge Servers: 7.10.50.00
 
Lifecycle Log example:

Plain Text
2024-06-05 16:35:22  RAC0181  The iDRAC recovered from a firmware boot loader error with the following reason : Boot-time failover. 
Log Sequence Number:
87476
Detailed Description:
The iDRAC recovered from a firmware Bootloader error that occurred because of the reason identified in the message.
Recommended Action:
No response action is required.
 
 
Cause
The bootloader was updated in the referenced firmware releases that is not backward compatible with older legacy firmware versions pre-June 2021. 
Resolution
This behavior is expected and carries forward in iDRAC9 firmware versions newer than June 2024 releases for PowerEdge 14/15G servers.

Respectfully,

@DELL-Young E​ I'm trying to downgrade because there are no options for IPMI fan controls in versions after 3.30.30.00

@DELL-Rey G​ It appears Young is correct about the bootloader issue. So it appears that there is no way to revert at this point. Unfortunately this means my servers fans are constantly blasting now because of a third party pcie device.

@DELL-Young E​ While this is correct information, it's not a solution. I really need to be able to downgrade the firmware of the iDRAC in order to restore functions that Dell has removed.

@rcorrao I'm also facing the same problem

same problem. I will never buy dell's product. I hate this brand

@DELL-Young E​

Is it possible to do it somehow 4.40.10.00???
Yes I am getting error RAC0181 due to firm 7.00.00.172. Or just replacing the motherboard? from older FW???

Hello, can you try this first and let us know.

https://dell.to/4dtMq0t

PowerEdge: iDRAC Recovery Procedure with firmimg.d7 or firmimgFIT.d9

@DELL-Young E​ That article references the 12G servers. The 14G servers from what I can tell require an add-in vFlash SD card module.

However this article below for iDRAC 9 appears to reference an SD card-iDRAC recovery procedure? It says "Bootloader is now polling the SD card slot." What SD card slot? Does this mean in order to perform this procedure, we need the vFlash module? How do we induce an iDRAC 9 recovery mode so it polls the SD card slot?

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/idrac9-lifecycle-controller-v3.0-series/idrac_3.00.00.00_ug/recovering-idrac?guid=guid-3bc0710b-c60a-482a-88fd-67a93adc1c5b&lang=en-us

Could you please forward to your supervisor's supervisor that there is a large community of enthusiasts on the internet who buy these 14G servers to learn on, and they want the ability to manually control the fan speed and minimum fan speed. That's why everyone's trying to downgrade their iDRACs. Please help us. Thank you.

I'm having the same issue.  I'm frustrated that Dell forces us to choose between older versions of iDRAC and having some control over the insane fan speeds.  (For example, the latest version addresses "OpenSSH RegreSSHion vulnerability."  So I can either live with the vulnerability or have to shout over the fans because I have a 3rd party pci card.)

I'll live with the old iDRAC version if I can get there.  But after downgrading through 6 versions, I'm stuck at 4.40.40.

The article referenced above indicates that an alternative approach is to use a TFTP server.  Since our R740s don't have an SD card, we might be able to use that?  But I don't know how to trigger the R740 to look for an update...

Hello,

here an article that can help the issue

Dell EMC Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller 9 (iDRAC9) Firmware Downgrade Failures RAC0181 | Dell US

@DELL-Marco B​ -

Thank you for your assistance!  However, the article you provided shows the following resolution:

@DELL-Marco B​ Hi Marco,

As you can see, Dell needs to give proper justification as to why they are preventing customers of these servers from downgrading to a lower iDRAC version that has better features related to cooling. We need to be able to flash the bootloader or Dell needs to add back cooling control via IPMI and lower fan % thresholds in a future iDRAC9 update. Can you escalate this to someone who is able to answer this question?

Hello,

unfortunately here in social media team we are not able to escalate add new feature, sorry to our engineer. It is not a break and fix issue but it worked as designed.

Maybe you can contact our customer care in order to suggest this.

Thanks