obligatory obscure reference

Under OS X 10.9 I was unable to get hp_ltt to find the newest firmware for my tape drive in interactive mode. For some reason it couldn’t verify the signature on the file or map it to the installed drive.

Here’s my workaround using the CLI version of hp_ltt:

First, run:
./hp_ltt -f scan

This will create the file ~/Library/Application Support/Hewlett-Packard/LTT/saved_scan.txt

This file contains two lines, the second has the device path at the start and the current driver version at the end

HBA_5383_65524:HP:DAT72X6:B312
path HBA_5383_65524
version B312

Then force a firmware load:

./hp_ltt -f firmware -p=HBA_5383_65524 file=/path/to/your/firmware/LTT_HP_DAT72X6_B604.frm

This has no feedback, all it does is blank the screen until the process finishes and the drive is rebooted for self testing.

Using scan again we can see that the driver was updated to B604:

HBA_5383_65524:HP:DAT72X6:B604