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This document provides information on new and revised features, as well as late-breaking news, for firmware release 5.15.0 on Sun Fire 6800/4810/4800/3800 systems.
This document contains the following information:
This section provides a brief description of the new features in 5.15.0. For detailed information on these features, refer to the Sun Fire 6800/4810/4800/3800 Systems Platform Administration Manual (part number 817-0999-10) and the Sun Fire 6800/4810/4800/3800 System Controller Command Reference Manual (part number
817-1000-10).
The following error diagnosis and domain restoration capabilities are enabled by default:
For further information, see the "Diagnosis and Domain Restoration" chapter in the Sun Fire 6800/4810/4800/3800 Systems Platform Administration Manual.
The system controller automatically monitors domains for hangs in which a domain does not respond to interrupts or a domain heartbeat stops within a designated timeout period. When the hang policy parameter of the setupdomain command is set to reset, the system controller automatically performs an externally initiated reset (XIR) and reboots the hung domain. For additional information, see the "Diagnosis and Domain Restoration" chapter in the Sun Fire 6800/4810/4800/3800 Systems Platform Administration Manual.
The physical location of a component, such as slots for CPU/Memory boards or slots for I/O assemblies, can be used to manage hardware resources that are configured into or out of the system. A component location has either a disabled or enabled state, which is referred to as the component location status. You can enable or disable components based on their physical location in the system.
You change a component location status through the setls command. This command replaces the disablecomponent and enablecomponent commands, which were previously used to blacklist and enable components, respectively.
Note - Sun recommends that you use the setls command rather than the disablecomponent and enablecomponent commands, even though those commands are still supported in 5.15.0. |
For additional information, see the "Introduction" chapter in the Sun Fire 6800/4810/4800/3800 Systems Platform Administration Manual.
A new setupplatform parameter, the HostID/MAC Address Swap, enables you to swap the HostID/MAC address of one domain with another. This feature is useful when host-licensed software is tied to a particular domain HostID and MAC address, but you need to run that host-licensed software on another domain. You can swap the domain HostID/MAC address with that of an available domain and then run the host-licensed software on the available domain, without encountering license restrictions tied to the original HostID/MAC address.
The setls command replaces the enablecomponent and disablecomponent commands, which have been deprecated starting with the 5.15.0 release. For details, refer to the setls command description in the Sun Fire 6800/4810/4800/3800 System Controller Command Reference Manual.
The following SC commands were changed in 5.15.0:
In 5.15.0, the following types of status messages are displayed on the platform console when sensors detect an abnormal condition for a component:
/NO/SB0, sensor status, over limit (7,1,0x201000d00050000) |
/NO/SB0, sensor status, under limit (7,2,0x201000d00050000) |
System boards with 5.12.x firmware are compatible with those running 5.13.0 through 5.15.x firmware; system boards running 5.11.x are not. You can check the firmware compatibility of your boards by running the
showboards -p version -v command. COD boards must be running firmware version 5.14.x or 5.15.x.
The information displayed indicates whether the firmware for each board is compatible with the ScApp version running on the SC. For details on verifying firmware compatibility, refer to the Install.info file included with this firmware release and the showboards command description in the Sun Fire 6800/4810/4800/3800 System Controller Command Reference Manual.
To simplify system administration, update all your system boards to the same firmware version and activate the new firmware version on your domains as soon as possible. Activate the domain firmware by running the setkeyswitch off and setkeyswitch on commands. For details on updating your system firmware, see the release-specific Install.info file included with each release of the firmware.
Instructions for upgrading firmware are provided in the Install.info file included with this firmware release. The Install.info file also contains instructions for downgrading to an earlier version of the firmware.
Caution - If you have a redundant system controller (SC) configuration, you must first upgrade the firmware on the spare SC, then on the main SC, as explained in the Install.info file. |
In some cases powering off or powering on a power supply after you upgrade to firmware version 5.15.x can cause a power supply fault. The power supply failure might exhibit the following characteristics:
Use the following workarounds to resolve the power supply failure. Start with
Workaround 1. If this workaround is unsuccessful, perform Workaround 2. If the second workaround is unsuccessful, perform Workaround 3.
This section describes only those bugs with potentially significant impact. The README file lists all bugs, including those seen only internally at Sun.
Manual reset of the SC has no effect.
1. Connect to each active domain through a network connection, such as telnet or rlogin.
2. Shut down each domain, if possible.
3. Power down the Sun Fire system, then power it up again.
Workaround: Run the showlogs or showboards command (from the platform shell) to show errors and the test status of a faulty system board.
After the spare SC is replaced and SC failover is enabled, the prompt shown on the spare SC is that of the machine from which it was removed.
Workaround: Execute setupplatform -p network to change the IP address and SC host name, reboot the SC, then do an SC failover.
If there is only one I/O boat in a domain, disabling bus B of an I/O controller results in an error message indicating that there are no good I/O boards available to boot the Solaris operating environment.
Workaround: Disable only the slots on the bus that are not working instead of the bus.
Some messages, for example SEEPROM-related information, are displayed on the domain console but not the platform console.
Workaround: Check all system logs.
Sun Management Center 3.0, Platform Update 4, does not recognize CPU V2 board components.
In Sun Fire 6800/4810/4800/3800 systems, console messages for the Solaris operating environment and OBP are placed in domain console buffers that are accessed by the system controller. If the system controller is unavailable, the buffers may fill up with messages, which in turn affects domain functionality. OBP appears to be stuck, while it waits for additional buffer space to become available.
Workaround: Try to ensure that the system controller is always available, or that it is unavailable only for a short period. You can also do the following to mitigate this situation:
WBEM-based dynamic reconfiguration operations do not recognize COD CPU/Memory boards. For example, when you check instances of Solaris_WDRAttachmentPoint, information displayed for the Solaris_CHSystemBoard class will not include information on any COD boards in the system.
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