iDRAC 9 issue LC023: Cannot access network share
I had a new server and tried to update it from downloads.dell.com over iDRAC. It kept failing:
LC023: Cannot access network share. Check network share access credentials (IP address, user name, password, share type, and so on). Refer to your product documentation for more details.
TL;DR
This error has many possible causes. In my case it was DNS. Once I configured a working resolver (Google’s 2001:4860:4860::8888), the update started working.
We run IPv6 only. The DNS is configured here:
iDRAC Settings / Connectivity / IPv6 Settings
A little longer version
I checked connectivity with the iDRAC diagnostics, which let me run ping, ifconfig and a few other commands. Connectivity looked fine. That wasn’t surprising, since I could reach the iDRAC web interface from my workstation.
I could ping6 the DNS servers (our own local resolvers), and downloads.dell.com resolved (for example 2a02:26f0:f700:3b6::3148):
$ dig AAAA downloads.dell.com
; <<>> DiG 9.18.12-0ubuntu0.22.04.2-Ubuntu <<>> AAAA downloads.dell.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 22822
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 6, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1
;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;downloads.dell.com. IN AAAA
;; ANSWER SECTION:
downloads.dell.com. 889 IN CNAME downloads.dell-cidr.akadns.net.
downloads.dell-cidr.akadns.net. 889 IN CNAME downloads-regions.dell-cidr.akadns.net.
downloads-regions.dell-cidr.akadns.net. 889 IN CNAME downloads.dell.com-v2-dd.edgekey.net.
downloads.dell.com-v2-dd.edgekey.net. 11759 IN CNAME e12616.dscd.akamaiedge.net.
e12616.dscd.akamaiedge.net. 30 IN AAAA 2a02:26f0:f700:3b6::3148
e12616.dscd.akamaiedge.net. 30 IN AAAA 2a02:26f0:f700:3ba::3148
..
As soon as I changed the DNS server, it worked. The cause was probably firewall rules on our own resolvers. I will look into that, but the updates work fine now.
Of course, the DNS fix was my last desperate attempt. It resolved the issue about ten minutes after I asked Dell support for help.
The Dell engineer sent me these two links:
Dell: how to update firmware via HTTPS
Dell: failing updates
I didn’t need them this time, but this is a good place to keep them.