x4100 ILOM 1.1.1 problems?
Tim Bradshaw
firmware for x4100s (and I assume related boxes)? This is the current
one right now. What we're seeing is that it all works (web gui, ssh
etc), but asking for console redirection hangs the web server in some
horrible way - if you have an existing ssh session you can restart the
ILOM but otherwise you have to powercycle the machine. This is fairly
crippling. This happened after upgrading (carefully) from whatever the
boxes shipped with.
I've looked on sunsolve, but not found anything useful.
Thanks
--tim
Rich Teer
> Hi, has anyone seen problems with the 1.1.1 version of the ILOM firmware for
> x4100s (and I assume related boxes)? This is the current one right now. What
> we're seeing is that it all works (web gui, ssh etc), but asking for console
> redirection hangs the web server in some horrible way - if you have an
> existing ssh session you can restart the ILOM but otherwise you have to
> powercycle the machine. This is fairly crippling. This happened after
> upgrading (carefully) from whatever the boxes shipped with.
Bugger. I'm (literally) experiencing this problem too, right now. :-(
"Fairly crippling" is an understatement...
--
Rich Teer, SCSA, SCNA, SCSECA, OpenSolaris CAB member
President,
Rite Online Inc.
Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich
Tim Bradshaw
> Bugger. I'm (literally) experiencing this problem too, right now. :-(
> "Fairly crippling" is an understatement...
I have a theory that anything to do with x86 is somehow cursed with
crapness, however nicely engineered (and these machines seem quite
nicely thought out to me). Clearly this is right.
--tim
Casper H.S. Dik
>Hi, has anyone seen problems with the 1.1.1 version of the ILOM
>firmware for x4100s (and I assume related boxes)? This is the current
>one right now. What we're seeing is that it all works (web gui, ssh
>etc), but asking for console redirection hangs the web server in some
>horrible way - if you have an existing ssh session you can restart the
>ILOM but otherwise you have to powercycle the machine. This is fairly
>crippling. This happened after upgrading (carefully) from whatever the
>boxes shipped with.
You can't log in anymore with "ssh" to the ILOM at all?
Casper
Tim Bradshaw
>
> You can't log in anymore with "ssh" to the ILOM at all?
I'm not now sure. When this first happened yesterday I could get an
ssh connection but it then immediately said (I think: like an idiot I
have lost the output) "Invalid operation" and chucked me out. I
discovered after that that if I had an existing ssh connection It was
still OK, and I could restart the ILOM from it (so better than
powercycling by a fairly large margin). This morning I think I've
established that actually I can even make new ssh connections after
it's bust: all that's hung up seems to be the web thing.
(I even had a sneaky look around using the you-should-not-use-this
sunservice login, but I can't find any logs and ps/top shows nothing I
can make sense of.)
I think I will have to work out how to downgrade it all now.
--tim
Casper H.S. Dik
>I'm not now sure. When this first happened yesterday I could get an
>ssh connection but it then immediately said (I think: like an idiot I
>have lost the output) "Invalid operation" and chucked me out. I
>discovered after that that if I had an existing ssh connection It was
>still OK, and I could restart the ILOM from it (so better than
>powercycling by a fairly large margin). This morning I think I've
>established that actually I can even make new ssh connections after
>it's bust: all that's hung up seems to be the web thing.
That's bad; so this is a fairly new software release?
>(I even had a sneaky look around using the you-should-not-use-this
>sunservice login, but I can't find any logs and ps/top shows nothing I
>can make sense of.)
>I think I will have to work out how to downgrade it all now.
Ah yes. Mine seems to be on version 1.0.7 (ISO 1.2/1.2.1); but
I hardly ever use the GUI; I just use serial redirection and ssh
to the ILOM for the serial console.
Casper
--
Expressed in this posting are my opinions. They are in no way related
to opinions held by my employer, Sun Microsystems.
Statements on Sun products included here are not gospel and may
be fiction rather than truth.
Tim Bradshaw
>
> That's bad; so this is a fairly new software release?
It's the current one: I think it's dated Jan this year sometime. I
presume the behaviour is some artifact of the way I did the upgrade or
the previous release, because it seems unlikely they'd ship one with
such an awful bug (not being ironic here).
--tim
Casper H.S. Dik
What did you upgrade from? I think there are some issue with the
software; it suffers from memory fragmentation after long uptimes;
when flashing, they suggests rebooting it first and then, depending on
the age of the software, you need to patch it first before the
flash will work properly.
Casper
Rich Teer
> What did you upgrade from? I think there are some issue with the
> software; it suffers from memory fragmentation after long uptimes;
> when flashing, they suggests rebooting it first and then, depending on
> the age of the software, you need to patch it first before the
> flash will work properly.
I upgraded from version 1.0.1. As the instructions said, I first used
the prepatch script (from the version 1.2 stuff), and then installed
the current version, 1.1.1 (from January this year). I did all this
after upgrading the LSI firmware and BIOS, again as per the docs.
With the exception of the Remote Console thing, it seems to be OK
(i.e., I can ssh into it and stuff). However, I needed to install
SOlaris 10 11/06 (from DVD) onto this machine, and in the brief time
I looked, I couldn't see how to tell the installer to use the serial
console regardless of how much RAM I have.
Rich Teer
> I have a theory that anything to do with x86 is somehow cursed with crapness,
> however nicely engineered (and these machines seem quite nicely thought out to
> me). Clearly this is right.
Indeed. I mean, even the user interface is screwed up. Whoever thought
that "start /SYS" and "start /SP/console" (case sensitive commands no
less!) were better than "poweron" and "console -f" respectively needs
their heads examining! The ILOM guys should have taken the lead from
the ALOM guys, IMHO. Oh, and being able to change the ILOM prompt
would be nice, too!
Martin Paul
> With the exception of the Remote Console thing, it seems to be OK
> (i.e., I can ssh into it and stuff). However, I needed to install
> SOlaris 10 11/06 (from DVD) onto this machine, and in the brief time
> I looked, I couldn't see how to tell the installer to use the serial
> console regardless of how much RAM I have.
I recently installed 11/06 on both an x4500 and x4600 via the
serial console. I was presented with a menu at the very beginning
of the installation process:
1. Solaris Interactive (default)
2. Custom JumpStart
3. Solaris Interactive Text (Desktop session)
4. Solaris Interactive Text (Console session)
5. Apply driver updates
6. Single user shell
Choosing '4' made the installer run on the serial console.
BTW, I was quite surprised that the x4500 has no DVD-drive. I
tried the drive redirection via the ILOM remote console once,
and while it basically worked, it was cumbersome to set up
and sloooow. Attaching a USB DVD-drive worked out better. Despite
Jumpstart, I still prefer internal optical drives on servers.
In case of disaster it makes things much easier.
mp.
--
Systems Administrator | Institute of Scientific Computing | Univ. of Vienna
| http://www.par.univie.ac.at/solaris/pca/
Patch Check Advanced | Analyze, download and install patches for Sun Solaris
Tim Bradshaw
> Indeed. I mean, even the user interface is screwed up. Whoever thought
> that "start /SYS" and "start /SP/console" (case sensitive commands no
> less!) were better than "poweron" and "console -f" respectively needs
> their heads examining! The ILOM guys should have taken the lead from
> the ALOM guys, IMHO. Oh, and being able to change the ILOM prompt
> would be nice, too!
Actually, I quite liked it in a way - I like the heirarchical stuff.
But I agree that it would be a good thing if Sun spent more effort
trying to make all their management CLIs similar, as it would reduce
effort. The ALOM on things like v240 is already similar enough to the
LOM that things like the small netras used to have that it feels
similar (but more featureful), and they in turn feel kind of like the
SC CLI that 6800s (and I presume the other big sunfire boxes) had
though it's a while since I've used them. But the ILOM is something
completely else, which is bad, even if it's "better".
--tim
Tim Bradshaw
> What did you upgrade from? I think there are some issue with the
> software; it suffers from memory fragmentation after long uptimes;
> when flashing, they suggests rebooting it first and then, depending on
> the age of the software, you need to patch it first before the
> flash will work properly.
We upgraded from:
SP firmware 1.0.7
SP firmware build number: 12513
SP firmware date: Wed Aug 2 15:03:28 PDT 2006
SP filesystem version: 0.1.13
Which I think is either the 1.2.1 release or the 1.2 release. We
didn't run the preflash script as our version was newer than 10664.
(Actually I tried the preflash script but it threw up its hands in
horror).
We've now dowgraded to the same version (the image that comes with the
1.2.1 buindle) and it all works fine. I actually tried upgrading
again and it breaks again. So clearly the most recent release is just
bust, I think.
For what it's worth, my suspicion is that there might be something
nasty in the TCP stack of the current one: when tftping the file to
download the tftpd I'm using whined hugely about duplicate ACKs,
whereas when upgrading to it (so using the old version to do the tftp)
it said nothing at all. Of course this could be just an artifact of
who knows what.
--tim
Casper H.S. Dik
>We upgraded from:
>SP firmware 1.0.7
>SP firmware build number: 12513
>SP firmware date: Wed Aug 2 15:03:28 PDT 2006
>SP filesystem version: 0.1.13
>Which I think is either the 1.2.1 release or the 1.2 release. We
>didn't run the preflash script as our version was newer than 10664.
>(Actually I tried the preflash script but it threw up its hands in
>horror).
Ok. (I think it wants you to reboot the ILOM first, but I'm not sure).
The above is the version I have (I think 1.2 and 1.2.1 don't differ
in great detail)
>We've now dowgraded to the same version (the image that comes with the
>1.2.1 buindle) and it all works fine. I actually tried upgrading
>again and it breaks again. So clearly the most recent release is just
>bust, I think.
Seems like it.
>For what it's worth, my suspicion is that there might be something
>nasty in the TCP stack of the current one: when tftping the file to
>download the tftpd I'm using whined hugely about duplicate ACKs,
>whereas when upgrading to it (so using the old version to do the tftp)
>it said nothing at all. Of course this could be just an artifact of
>who knows what.
Interesting.
Could you give a few easy steps to reproduce the problem? Then we
can file a bug....
Rich Teer
> I recently installed 11/06 on both an x4500 and x4600 via the
> serial console. I was presented with a menu at the very beginning
> of the installation process:
>
> 1. Solaris Interactive (default)
> 2. Custom JumpStart
> 3. Solaris Interactive Text (Desktop session)
> 4. Solaris Interactive Text (Console session)
> 5. Apply driver updates
> 6. Single user shell
>
> Choosing '4' made the installer run on the serial console.
Right, but I couldn't see that menu in the first place. :-)
Apparently it's possible to redirect the console at the BIOS
level, so that that menu is visible, and one can procede as
normal. My excuse is that I'm relatively new to this x86 stuff.
I used to the SPARC world, where jumping through such hoops
isn't necessary. :-)
> and sloooow. Attaching a USB DVD-drive worked out better. Despite
> Jumpstart, I still prefer internal optical drives on servers.
> In case of disaster it makes things much easier.
Couldn't agree more.
Tim Bradshaw
>
> Ok. (I think it wants you to reboot the ILOM first, but I'm not sure).
Yes, it does (or I did, anyway!).
>
> Could you give a few easy steps to reproduce the problem? Then we
> can file a bug....
I'll send you it by mail as it's boring here.
--tim
Frank Cusack
> With the exception of the Remote Console thing, it seems to be OK
> (i.e., I can ssh into it and stuff). However, I needed to install
> SOlaris 10 11/06 (from DVD) onto this machine, and in the brief time
> I looked, I couldn't see how to tell the installer to use the serial
> console regardless of how much RAM I have.
You need console=ttya at boot time.
When it boots into grub, hit 'e' to edit the default boot entry, go down
one line to edit the 'kernel' line, add '-B console=ttya' then hit 'b'
to boot. Don't add '-B' if there is already a '-B', instead just append
',console=ttya' to the '-B' options. I figured this out just by looking
at the default "failsafe" entry.
With network boot your menu.lst would look something like
title Solaris_10 Jumpstart
kernel /I86PC.Solaris_10-1/multiboot kernel/unix -B install_config=...,<other jumpstart params>,console=ttya - install
module ...
DVD install is really blah, it's not too hard to get a jumpstart thing
setup. The jumpstart server doesn't even need to be Solaris. But
anyway from DVD, you should be able to edit the grub settings
interactively.
-frank