Firmware Update via USB Stick

Recently I performed a software upgrade on a Fortinet Active/Passive Cluster. The primary firewall took the upgrade ok but the secondary unit got hung up. When I rebooted the secondary unit it had remained at the old firmware version. I did not have a working USB-to-Serial converter available so was unable to perform a CLI tftp upgrade of the secondary unit. Here is how I used a USB stick to upgrade the secondary unit:

• Format a USB stick using FAT16. This works best on a PC. The CLI USB commands on the firewall did not work for me very reliably.
• "format : /FS:FAT /V:" where Label is a short text string to name the drive. So for example "format e: /fs:fat /v:usbdrive"
• Copy the appropriate firmware to the USB stick as "image.out".
• Insert USB stick into firewall you want to upgrade and reboot the firewall
• After several minutes the firewall will reboot again. Remove the USB at the beginning of this reboot.

Voila, your firewall should now be upgraded to the firmware on the USB stick.

Software Updates

FortiOS:

• 3.0 MR7 Patch 7, Build 750 - Recommended for Production
  
• 4.1 Patch 1, Build 185 - Bleeding Edge so be careful

FortiClient:

• 4.1 Patch 1, Build 132

FortiManager:

• 3.0 MR7 Patch 5, Build 676
• 4.1 Patch 1, Build 214

FortiAnalyzer:

• 4.0.3, Build 50
• 4.1 Patch 1, Build 123

FortiWeb

• 3.0 MR3 Patch 1, Build 121