C H A P T E R 1 |
Description of Software 2.0 |
This chapter describes the contents of Software 2.0. It has the following sections:
Software 2.0 adds support for the new Sun Fire X4600 M2 8-DIMM Split Plane CPU module, which uses the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor.
This software release supports the following operating systems:
For a current list of supported operating systems, refer to this web page:
http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4600/os.jsp
Software 2.0 includes the following software:
This section lists the component versions for the various releases of the Sun Fire X4600 M2 server software.
This section describes bugs, unexpected behavior, and other considerations that might affect an upgrade to the firmware included in this release.
The ipmiflash utility cannot be used to upgrade the ILOM software from 2.0.2.1 to 2.0.2.5.
Use the ILOM command line interface, as described in Updating the BIOS and ILOM Firmware.
Upgrading the BIOS and LSI firmware using the Sun Installation Assistant (SIA) utility is not supported in this release. Upgrading the Service Processor (ILOM) firmware is supported.
For more information on SIA, refer to the Sun Installation Assistant for Windows and Linux User's Guide.
Starting with ILOM 1.1.1, the firmware uses a new, more reliable flash layout. Because of the layout changes, special steps might be required to downgrade to previous ILOM 1.0.x releases.
You might have to perform the flash downgrade to 1.0.x process 2 times, to reformat the flash layout to the old format. If the flash downgrade through GUI, CLI, or N1 System Manager, does not succeed the first time, retry a second time to complete the process.
The new ILOM flash process only powers off the host if a new BIOS version is needed. The ILOM CLI load command provides the -f option to force update of all components. Use the following command to force updating all firmware components:
load -f -source tftp://tftpserver/firmware.ima
where tftpserver is a trivial file-transfer protocol (TFTP) server and firmware.ima is the name of the image file, such as ilom.x4600m2-1.1.1.ima.
The bootable CD used to upgrade the ILOM appears blank when viewed from the OS. This is expected behavior.
The host CPU and DIMM FRU information shown by the service processor is provided to the service processor during each BIOS power-on self-test (POST). Therefore, after a BIOS/ILOM upgrade, this FRU information is empty until the first host BIOS POST.
This is expected behavior. Reset the server and allow it to complete POST during bootup to repopulate the FRU lists.
If you use the CLI to perform the update and JavaRConsole is active, a dialog box might appear in JavaRConsole with the following message and an OK button:
Keyboard redirection error: an established connection was aborted by the software in your host machine
This is expected behavior. Click OK in the dialog box to continue. It is possible that clicking the OK button will not close the dialog box. In that case, terminate the JavaRConsole process. For example, on a Windows platform, press Control+Alt+Delete to bring up the list of open processes, then terminate the JavaRConcole process.
ILOM service processor might not successfully update the BIOS version, if a previous flash upgrade has failed. If the BIOS version is not correct after ILOM flash upgrade completes, use the -f force flag on the ILOM CLI load command, to force BIOS flash upgrade. For details, see New ILOM Flash Update Layout.
Sometimes after flashing an image on SP, the ILOM WebGUI will not allow you to log in and gives “Authentication fail” error. Clearing the cache and cookies of the web browser enables you to log in as usual.
Software 1.3 for the Sun Fire X4600 M2 contains a build of ILOM 2.0.2.1 with a serious bug. Upgrading to this ILOM version causes FRU data to be lost. Because of this, Software 1.3 has been withdrawn and replaced by Software 1.3A.
If you have not yet upgraded to the ILOM provided with Software 1.3, this issue does not affect you. Simply discard any copies of Software 1.3 and obtain Software 1.3A, which contains ILOM firmware with the fix.
If you have upgraded to the ILOM provided with Software 1.3, you must install the ILOM firmware provided with Software 1.3A. Doing so will both remove the bug and recover some of the lost FRU data. The remaining FRU data must be re-entered manually.
You can identify your ILOM firmware using the ILOM CLI or WebGUI:
In the information you obtain, find the “Firmware Version” (just “Firmware” in the CLI) and “Firmware Build Number”. Depending on the values you obtain, you should take one of the following actions:
The ILOM bug causes the following FRU data to be lost:
You can recover the Product Part Number and Product Serial Number by installing the ILOM firmware provided with Software 1.3A. If you downgraded the ILOM after observing the problem, Product Part Number and Product Serial Number are lost permanently, and must be re-entered. Chassis Serial Number must be re-entered in any case.
Follow these steps to re-enter the lost FRU data:
1. Use SSH to log in to the “sunservice” ILOM account. From the Solaris or Linux command line:
where ipaddress is the Service Processor IP address.
2. Enter one of the following commands. If you only need to re-enter the chassis serial number, enter:
servicetool --fru_chassis_serial_number
If you need to re-enter all three FRU values, enter:
servicetool --fru_product_part_number --fru_product_serial_number --fru_chassis_serial_number
3. Enter the FRU information when prompted.
After flashing a new image, you may not be able to log in to the WebGUI. This can happen if the WebGUI is open when the new image is flashed.
Clear the browser’s cache and cookies.
If your password contains exactly 16 characters, you will not be able to log in to the service processor (SP) using either the ILOM web GUI or CLI.
Choose a password containing fewer than 16 characters.
ILOM service processor might not successfully update the BIOS version if a previous flash upgrade has failed.
This issue applies only up to ILOM 1.1.1.
If the BIOS version is not correct after ILOM flash upgrade completes, force the BIOS flash upgrade using the -f force flag on the ILOM CLI load command.
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