iDrac 9 issue LC023: Cannot access network share

I have a new server and tried to update it from downloads.dell.com via iDRAC, but 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.

TLDR

This error can by caused by all sorts of network issues, but in my case it was caused by a problem with DNS. As soon as I configured a functional DNS resolver (Google’s 2001:4860:4860::8888), the update started working.

In my case (we are using IPv6 only), the DNS is configured here:

iDRAC Settings/Connectivity/IPv6 Settings/

A little longer version

I checked the connectivity using iDRAC diagnostics which makes it possible to run a few helpful commands like ping, ifconfig etc. The connectivity looked OK. That wasn’t completely surprising because I was connected to the iDRAC web interface from my workstation.

I was able to ping6 the DNS servers (our own local resolvers) and the IP adres resolved for downloads.dell.com (for instance the 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
..
(Klobravik)

As soon as I changed the DNS server, it started working. It’s likely that I was bitten by firewall rules on our DNS resolvers. I will investigate this but the updates are working fine now.

Of course, I made the last desparate attempt with DNS which resolved the issue about 10 minutes after I asked DELL support for help.

The nice guy from DELL 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 where to keep them.