It happens to have to put your hands on Dell servers, maybe not updated for months / years, through the lifecycle controller (F10 during the system boot to update bios and firmware of the present hardware).
This is a solution that has saved me several times…. except from the first time in which I threw away hours to figure out how to run updates through Lifecycle Controller. If the server is a little out of date with the updates it happens that during the update phase, that can be done directly from Dell ftp or from an updating iso, this error appears:
Well this is what I need to do to solve and continue with updates:
1) Log in to ssh idrac and type the command “racadm racreset” to reset the idrac itself
2) Download this file from the Dell website: http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER00502596M/1/BDF_1.5.5_BIN-12.usc
3) Connect to the server iDRAC (preferably with firefox because sometimes there are problems with other browsers)
4) Go to section “Update”
5) Pass the file you just downloaded via the button “browse”
Often this update is enough to fix things, sometimes (for very old iDrac versions) you must also perform these additional steps to update the iDRAC itself:
6) Download the file from the Dell website to update iDRAC http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER01270825M/1/iDRAC6_1.95_A00_FW_IMG.exe (this is an example there are also newer versions but of course it depends on the server model too)
7) Open the .exe file with an archive manager and extract the file with the .d6 extension present inside
8) Go to the update section of the iDRAC and pass the .d6 file using the button “browse”
When finished try again to use the lifecycle controller and updates should be successful!