Power6 Entry Systems Firmware

Applies to: 8204-E8A, 8203-E4A, 9407-M15, 9408-M25 and 9409-M50

This document provides information about the installation of Licensed Machine or Licensed Internal Code, which is sometimes referred to generically as microcode or firmware.

Contents

1.0 Systems Affected

This package provides firmware for System p 550 (8204-E8A), System p 520 (8203-E4A),  System i 550 (8204-E8A), System i 520 (8203-E4A),  System i 515 (9407-M15), System i 525 (9408-M25), System i 550 (9409-M50), Power 520 and Power 550 servers only. Do not use on any other systems.

The firmware level in this package is:

Updating your system firmware from EL320_031 or EL320_040 directly to EL320_101 is DISRUPTIVE.

2.0 Important Information

Service Processor flash memory errors (8204-E8A and 9409-M50 systems only)

IBM strongly recommends updating to System Firmware level EL320_101 or later as this firmware provides improved reliability to the 8204-E8A and 9409-M50 servers. One enhancement prevents accumulation of single bit errors in the memory used to store System Firmware by periodically correcting single bit errors automatically. If a significant number of such errors were to accumulate, the server may not boot successfully after main power is lost or removed. We strongly recommend customers update both the Temporary and Permanent copies of System Firmware when performing this upgrade. Updating both the Temporary and Permanent copies allows both memory areas to be corrected. It is critical the System Firmware update uses one of the two methods listed below. Updating System Firmware from the operating system may not correct all existing single bit errors.

Note: Do not remove main power from the server before updating the System Firmware.

For servers that are not managed by an HMC

Update the System Firmware using a USB flash drive. This method will update both the Temporary and Permanent copies of the System Firmware. For instructions on this method of install, please use the following link:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/scope/hw/index.jsp?topic=/ipha5/fix_firm_usb.htm

For servers that are HMC-managed

Note:  A normal accept operation to copy the Temporary side contents to the Permanent side cannot be used in place of these instructions.  The update must be done using the following method (or its command line equivalent).

IMPORTANT: Note that even if the update you are installing is categorized as being concurrent, use of the Advanced Features option will power off the system during this procedure.

If you are installing an update to a level within the same release (ex. 340_xxx to 340_yyy)

1) Power off the managed system.
2) Using the HMC GUI interface, click on "Updates" in the navigation (left-hand) pane. Click in the
checkbox beside the Managed System.
a) Click on "Change Licensed Internal Code for the current release".
b) Select "Start Change Licensed Internal Code wizard" and click "OK"
c) After clicking "OK" on the readiness check panel, select the repository where the firmware files
can be found and click "OK".
d) Click on "Next" to step through the wizard panels. Accept the license agreement when it is
displayed, and then click "Finish" to start the update.
f) When the update completes, click on "Change Licensed Internal Code for the current release"
g) Select "Advanced Features" and click "OK".
h) Select "Install and Activate" and click "OK".
i) After clicking "OK" on the readiness check panel, select the repository where the firmware files
can be found and click "OK".
j) Select "Specific Levels" and click "OK".
k) Select the managed system, then select "Change Levels".
l) Select the same level chosen in step c and click  "OK" and then click "OK" again on the next panel.
m) On the "Select Installation Type" panel, ensure that the "Disruptive install and activate" radio button is selected and click "OK".
n) Accept the license agreement when it is displayed, and then click "OK " in the confirmation panels to start the update.
o) When the process completes, the Managed System may be powered on.


If you are installing an upgrade to a new release (ex 320_xxx to 340 or 350_xxx)

1) Power off the Managed System
2) Using the HMC GUI interface, click on "Updates" in the navigation (left-hand) pane. Click in the
checkbox beside the Managed System.
a) Click on "Change Licensed Internal Code to a new release".
b) After clicking "OK" on the readiness check panel, select the repository where the firmware files
can be found and click "OK". Select the new firmware level from
the selection panel displayed and click "OK".
c) Accept the license agreement and click on "OK" in the confirmation panels to start the upgrade. 
f) When the upgrade completes, both the Activate and Accepted levels will reflect the level just installed. To effect a complete overwrite of both sides of the Service Processor, you must continue with this procedure.
g) Click on " Change Licensed Internal Code for the current release".
h) Select "Advanced Features" and click "OK".
i) Select "Install and Activate" and click "OK".
j) After clicking "OK" on the readiness check panel, select the repository where the firmware files
can be found and click "OK".
k) Select "Specific Levels" and click "OK".
l) Select the managed system, then select "Change Levels".
m) Select the same level chosen in step b and click  "OK" and then click "OK" again.
n) On the "Select Installation Type" panel, ensure that the "Disruptive install and activate" radio button is selected and click "OK".
o) Accept the license agreement when it is displayed, and then click "OK " twice to confirm the action.
p) When the process completes, the Managed System may be powered on.

HMC-Managed System

Systems may continue to use HMC code Version 7, Release 3.2.

For information concerning HMC releases and to access the HMC code packages, go to the following URL: http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/hmc/home.html

NOTE: You must be logged in as hscroot in order for the firmware installation to complete correctly.

Support for EnergyScaletm and Active Energy Managertm

For more information on the energy management features now available, please see the EnergyScaletm white paper.

Signal Cable in an InfiniBand loop, and InfiniBand I/0 drawer power on/off

The problems noted in this section in earlier levels of this description file were corrected in the EL320_059 firmware level by the last two fixes in the "affects certain systems" section.

Concurrent Firmware Updates

Concurrent system firmware update is only supported on HMC - Managed Systems only.

Memory Considerations for Firmware Upgrades

The increase in memory used by the firmware is due to the additional functionality in later firmware releases.

3.0 Firmware Information and Description

Use the following examples as a reference to determine whether your installation will be concurrent or disruptive.

For systems that are not managed by an HMC, the installation of system firmware is always disruptive.

Note: The concurrent levels of system firmware may, on occasion, contain fixes that are known as deferred. These deferred fixes can be installed concurrently, but will not be activated until the next IPL. Deferred fixes, if any, will be identified in the "Firmware Update Descriptions" table of this document. For deferred fixes within a service pack, only the fixes in the service pack which cannot be concurrently activated are deferred.

Note: The file names and service pack levels used in the following examples are for clarification only, and are not
necessarily levels that have been, or will be released.

System firmware file naming convention:

01ELXXX_YYY_ZZZ

NOTE: Values of service pack and last disruptive service pack level (YYY and ZZZ) are only unique within a release level (XXX). For example, 01EL310_067_045 and 01EL320_067_053 are different service packs.

An installation is disruptive if:

Example: Currently installed release is EL310, new release is EL320 Example: EL310_120_120 is disruptive, no matter what level of EL310 is currently
installed on the system Example: Currently installed service pack is EL310_120_120 and
new service pack is EL310_152_130

An installation is concurrent if:

The release level (XXX) is the same, and
The service pack level (YYY) currently installed on you system is the same or higher than the last disruptive service pack level (ZZZ) of the service pack to be installed.

An installation is concurrent if:

Example: Currently installed service pack is EL310_126_120,
new service pack is EL310_143_120.

Firmware Information and Update Description

 
Filename Size Checksum
01EL320_093_045.rpm 22085824 61384
EL320
EL320_093_045

05/04/09

 Impact: Availability        Severity: HIPER

System firmware changes that affect all systems

  • HIPER for models E8A, M50, and Power 550 servers: The firmware was enhanced to improve the service processor's capability to recover from bad bits in the flash memory. A predictive error, or an unrecoverable error, will be logged against the card that contains the system firmware if the number of correctable or uncorrectable errors exceeds the threshold.
  • DEFERRED: The firmware was enhanced so that the system recovers gracefully from an I/O load time-out, rather than issuing a machine check, which crashes the system.
  • A problem was fixed that caused the service processor diagnostics to report a "TOD (time-of-day) overflow" error, instead of an uncorrectable memory error, when failures occurred on memory DIMMs.
  • A problem was fixed that, in certain configurations, caused the removal of a host Ethernet adapter (HEA) port to fail when using a dynamic LPAR (DLPAR) operation.
  • A problem was fixed that, under certain circumstances, prevented the operating system from recovering a PCI-E adapter on which a temporary enhanced error handling (EEH) error occurred.
  • The firmware was enhanced so that a call home will be made if the hypervisor issues a "terminate immediate" interrupt.
  • A problem was fixed that prevented service processor and hypervisor error log entries from being reported to the operating system after a successful partition migration. This problem only affected the partition that was migrated.
  • A problem was fixed that caused the migration of an AIX or Linux partition to fail when firmware-assisted dump was enabled. When this problem occurs, the partition becomes unresponsive on the target system, and the target system may have to be rebooted to recover.
  • A problem was fixed that prevented the service processor from automatically booting from the permanent (or P side) if the temporary (or T side) of the firmware flash was corrupted. When the problem occurred, the service processor stopped instead of booting from the P side.
System firmware changes that affect certain systems
  • On systems with a host Ethernet adapter (HEA) or host channel adapter (HCA) assigned to a Linux partition, a problem was fixed that prevented the partition from booting if 512 GB, 1 TB, or 1.5 TB of memory was assigned to the partition. When this problem occurred, SRC B700F105 was logged.
  • On systems with the integrated xSeries adapter (IXA), a problem was fixed that prevented the creation of a system plan on the HMC.
  • On systems running AIX partitions, a problem was fixed that caused AIX to erroneously log a hardware error in which the LABEL field is "INTRPPC_ERR", and the INTERRUPT LEVEL is "0009 0001", after a concurrent firmware update or partition migration. This error did not affect the operation of the system or partition. 
EL320_083_045

09/24/08

 Impact: Serviceability                 Severity: HIPER

System firmware changes that affect all systems:

  • DEFERRED and HIPER: A problem was fixed that, under certain rarely occurring circumstances, an application could cause a processor to go into an error state, and the system to crash.
  • DEFERRED and HIPER: The system initialization settings were changed to reduce the likelihood of a system crash under certain circumstances.
  • HIPER: A problem was fixed that caused the system to terminate abnormally with SRC B131E504.
  • HIPER: A problem was fixed that caused a system to fail to reboot after a B1xxE504 SRC was logged due to a processor interconnection bus failure. The same SRC, B1xx E504, was logged when the reboot failed.
  • HIPER: A problem was fixed that might cause a partition to crash during a partition migration before the migration was complete. 
  • A problem was fixed that caused SRC B1818A10 to be erroneously generated after the successful installation of system firmware.
  • Enhancements were made to the firmware to improve the FRU callouts for certain types of failures of the time-of-day clock circuitry.
  • A problem was fixed that, under certain rarely occurring circumstances, caused the system to crash if an L2 or L3 cache failure occurred.
  • The firmware was enhanced so that the contents of /tmp are included when a service processor dump is taken.
  • A problem was fixed that caused a predictive SRC, B181EF88, to be erroneously logged after a successful installation of system firmware, and a subsequent slow-mode IPL, of the system.
  • A problem was fixed that, under certain rarely occurring circumstances, caused the system to crash with SRC B7005191 being logged.
  • A problem was fixed that prevented the system from rebooting if an error occurred during a memory-preserving IPL.
  • A problem was fixed that prevented the diagnostic commands in AIX (diag and lsmcode, for example) from working after a partition migration.
  • A problem was fixed that, under certain rarely occurring circumstances, caused a partition shutdown or partition reboot to hang with SRC D200B077.
  • A problem was fixed that, under certain rarely occurring circumstances, caused the hypervisor to loose its communication link to the service processor and log SRC A181D000.
  • A problem was fixed that, under certain rarely occurring circumstances, might have caused dynamic LPAR (DLPAR) operations on memory to fail.
  • A problem was fixed that prevented I/O hardware operations from completing before dynamic LPAR (DLPAR) operations were performed on memory. This caused PCI bus errors, and multiple instances of SRC B7006971 to be logged.
  • A problem was fixed in the hypervisor that, under certain rarely occurring circumstances, caused a system-level activation to fail.
  • A problem was fixed that caused SRC B7006971 to be generated because the firmware was incorrectly performing operations on PCI-Express I/O adapters during dynamic LPAR (DLPAR) operations on memory.
  • A problem was fixed that caused the message "BA330000malloc error!" to be displayed on the operating system console after a partition migration, even though SRC BA330000 had not been logged. When this problem occurred, the partition migration appeared to be successful. However, a process within the partition was either hung or had failed, and in most cased the partition had to be rebooted to fully recover.
  • The firmware was enhanced to improve the description and service actions that are logged with SRC BA210012.
  • A problem was fixed that, under certain rare circumstances, prevented a partition migration from completing successfully if processors were removed from the partition being migrated prior to the migration using dynamic LPAR (DLPAR) operations.
  • A problem was fixed that, under certain rare circumstances, caused a system crash during partition migration operations.
  • A problem was fixed that, under certain rare circumstances, caused the hypervisor to crash when it was booting.
System firmware changes that affect certain systems:
  • On systems that are managed by a hardware management console (HMC), a problem was fixed that caused the HMC to show an "Incomplete" state after it attempted to read a file with an incorrect size from the service processor (or system controller). This problem also occurred if the "factory configuration" option was used on the advanced system management interface (ASMI) menus.
  • On systems with I/O drawers attached, a problem was fixed that might have caused some I/O slots in the drawers not to be configured when the system was booted. 
  • On i5 partitions using IOP-based I/O adapters which are configured to use i5 clustering (SAN), a problem was fixed that caused the failover of an I/O drawer or tower, to a system which previously owned the drawer or tower, to fail.
  • On systems with a large number of fibre channel disks, a problem was fixed that caused SRC BA210003 to logged (which called out the fibre channel adapter) when the system management services (SMS) boot firmware was searching for a boot disk. 
EL320_076_031

06/06/08

 Impact: Serviceability         Severity: HIPER

System firmware changes that affect all systems:

  • DEFERRED and HIPER: The processor initialization settings were changed to reduce the likelihood of a processor going into an error state and causing a checkstop or system crash.
  • HIPER: A problem was fixed that caused large numbers of enhanced error handling (EEH) errors to be logged against the 4-port gigabit Ethernet adapter, F/C 5740, under certain circumstances.
  • A problem was fixed that caused the /tmp directory on the service processor to fill up, which results in an out-of-memory condition. When this problem occurred, the service processor usually performed a reset/reload. This is one possible cause of SRC B1817201 being logged.
  • A problem was fixed that caused panel function 02 to fail when trying to set the "next IPL speed" or "next IPL side".
System firmware changes that affect systems managed by an HMC
  • HIPER: A problem was fixed in the hypervisor that might cause a partition migration to fail.
EL320_061_031

Mfg Only
05/09/08

 Impact: Serviceability                   Severity: HIPER
  • HIPER: A problem was fixed that caused a concurrent firmware installation to hang with SRC BA00E840 being logged. This problem may also cause a partition migration to hang, under certain circumstances, with the same SRC, BA00E840, being logged. This SRC will be logged when this level of firmware is installed and will generate a call home; it should be ignored. It will not be logged during subsequent installations.
EL320_059_031

Mfg Only
05/06/08

 Impact: Function                    Severity: Special Attention

New features and functions:

- Support for IPv6 was added.

- Support for logical volumes bigger than 2 TB was added.

- On system managed by an HMC, virtual switch support for virtual Ethernet devices was added. This requires HMC V7 R3.3.0.0 with efix MH01102 to be running on the HMC.

Fixes that affect all systems:

  • HIPER: A problem was fixed that caused capacity-on-demand (COD) data to be retrieved in an unreadable format from the Anchor (VPD) card.
  • HIPER: A problem was fixed that caused enhanced error handling (EEH) to fail on certain I/O adapters. 
  • DEFERRED: A problem was fixed that caused the system to appear to hang with C10090B8 in the control (operator) panel during a slow mode boot. 
  • A problem was fixed that prevented the processor clock from being deconfigured with the fabric bus after a hardware error.
  • A problem was fixed that caused the L2 deconfiguration option to be displayed on the advanced system management interface (ASMI) menus on systems on which it is not supported.
  • A problem was fixed that caused the GX adapter slot reservation option to be displayed on the advanced system management interface (ASMI) menus on systems on which it is not supported. 
  • A problem was fixed that caused the location code reported with enhanced error handling (EEH) errors on certain imbedded slots have a "-Cx" suffix instead of the correct "-T#" suffix for the underlying adapter. This also impacted the HMC's System Planning tool.
  • A problem was fixed that caused the Linux boot loader to lose its command line parameters (and fail to boot a Linux partition) during a reconfiguration reboot.
  • A problem was fixed that caused the "iSCSI" and "network1" aliases to be created incorrectly in the SMS menus; this might have prevented the system or partition from booting from that device.
  • A problem was fixed that caused this informational message to be erroneously sent to the operating system console:
subq[5][0] destination address is 0!!!
Check whether the subq is needed. If it is, allocate MEM.
  • A problem was fixed that caused the AIX command lsvpd to hang if it was executed during a partition migration.
  • A problem was fixed that caused the system or partition to hang at the "Welcome to AIX" banner, following an iSCSI boot, during the installation of AIX.
  • A problem was fixed that caused an iSCSI login to fail under certain circumstances. When this failure occurred, the message sent to the console looked something like this:
iscsiFailed to LOGIN to target, rc = 1
failed to login.
could not open target 0x9034751 :system04 for r/w, aborting...
tcpOPEN: iscsi open failed
!BA012010 !
  • A problem was fixed that caused the location codes of devices attached to the integrated USB ports to have a duplicate port suffix. For example, when this problem occurred, the location code of the device was shown as: 
/usb-scsi@1 U789D.001.DQDGARW-P1-T2-T2-L1

instead of the correct location code, which is

/usb-scsi@1 U789D.001.DQDGARW-P1-T2-L1

  • Two translation issues were fixed. The first one caused the string "No alias" to always be displayed on the iSCSI menus in SMS in English even though it should have been translated into the other languages that the SMS menus support.. The second one caused the NIC (network interface card) parameters such as the client IP address in the SMS ping menu to be displayed with message strings in English; these should have been translated as well. 
  • A problem was fixed that caused the SMS menus to drop into the open firmware prompt with the message "DEFAULT CATCH!" when the ping test failed.
  • A problem was fixed that prevented the operating system from setting the boot device list in NVRAM.
  • A problem was fixed that caused approximately 20-25 occurrences of informational SRC B7005300 to be logged during every IPL, which was filling up the error logs.
  • A problem was fixed that caused a service processor dump to be generated with SRC B181EF88 when the advanced system management interface (ASMI) client was closed abruptly, or a network failure disconnected the client and the ASMI.
  • Enhancements were made to the firmware to improve the reliability of memory DIMMs.
  • A change was made to the firmware such that predictive SRCs B18138B0, B1813862, or B1813882 are now logged as informational.
System firmware changes that affect certain model E4A and E8A systems:
  • HIPER: On systems managed by an HMC, a problem was fixed that might cause the system to terminate while IPLing partitions soon after a system boot. This problem might also have been seen if the partitions were set to "autostart". This failure is typically seen on systems with a large amount of memory; SRC B181D138 is usually logged when this error occurs.
  • On system using the EnergyScale(TM) technology, enhancements were made to include status, log, and error information about the Power Save mode in the service processor error logs.
  • On systems using the EnergyScale(TM) technology, a problem was fixed that caused the calculations of power usage to be incorrect.
  • On systems managed by an HMC, a problem was fixed that prevented the "100 Mbps/full duplex" setting for the HEA 1 Gbps ports from being implemented from the HMC. When this occurred, there was no error message on the HMC, but the setting never took effect.
  • On systems managed by an HMC, a problem was fixed that caused the MAC addresses displayed on the HMC, in the HEA logical port information for the second port group, to show invalid addresses.
  • On systems with 7134-G30 drawers attached, a problem was fixed that caused the InfiniBand I/O device to drop packets, which resulted in an unrecoverable error.
  • On systems with 7134-G30 drawers attached, a problem was fixed that caused the drawer to fail when performing concurrent maintenance on the associated InfiniBand loop.
  • On systems with 7134-G30 drawers attached, a problem was fixed that caused the partition to become unresponsive when an InfiniBand cable in a redundantly-cabled loop was disconnected. 
EL320_046_031

06/09/08

 Impact: Serviceability                   Severity: HIPER
  • HIPER: A problem was fixed that caused a concurrent firmware installation to hang with SRC BA00E840 being logged. This problem may also cause a partition migration to hang, under certain circumstances, with the same SRC, BA00E840, being logged. This SRC will be logged when this level of firmware is installed and will generate a call home; it should be ignored. It will not be logged during subsequent installations.
EL320_040_031

02/29/08

 8204-E8A Impact: Serviceability               Severity: Special Attention
8203-E4A Impact: New                                Severity: New

New Features and Functions:

  • Support for the 8203-E4A system was added.
Fixes that affect all model E8A systems:
  • DEFERRED: A problem was fixed that caused a system crash (with SRC B131E504) by changing the initialization settings of the I/O control hardware.
  • A problem was fixed that, under certain circumstances, caused the InfiniBand adapter to stop responding to InfiniBand requests. 
  • A problem was fixed that caused SRC B1813014 to be logged after a successful system firmware installation. This SRC will be logged when this level of firmware is installed and will generate a call home; it should be ignored. It will not be logged during subsequent installations.
System firmware changes that affect certain model E8A systems:
  • On systems with a 1519-100 tower attached, a problem was fixed that caused the location code of a connector on the integrated virtual IOP to be displayed as Un-SE1-SE1-T1 instead of Un-SE1-T1.
  • On systems with 7134-G30 I/O drawers attached in certain cabling configurations, a problem was fixed that prevented the I/O port labels from being displayed for the port location codes on the hardware topology screens.
  • On systems running system firmware level EL320_031, a problem was fixed that caused attempts to call home to fail.
  • On systems running the Active Energy Managertm, a problem was fixed that caused the Exhaust Heat Index (EHI) to read up to 21 degrees lower than the actual exhaust air temperature.
EL320_031_031

02/08/08

 8204-E8A Impact: New Severity: New
8203-E4A Not supported at this level

Features and Functions:

  • Support for the creation of multiple virtual shared processor pools (VSPPs) within the one physical pool. (In order for AIX performance tools to report the correct information on systems configured with multiple shared processor pools, a minimum of AIX 5.3 TL07 or AIX 6.1 must be running.)
  • Support for the "hyperboot" boot speed option in the power on/off menu on the Advanced System Management interface (ASMI).
  • Support for the capability to move a running AIX or Linux partition from one system to another compatible system with a minimum of disruption. 
  • Support for the collection of extended I/O device information (independent of the presence of an operating system) when a system is first connected to an HMC and is still in the manufacturing default state. 
  • Support for EnergyScaletm and Active Energy Managertm. For more information on the energy management features now available, please see the EnergyScaletm white paper . 


Note 1: The lowest power cap that Active Energy Managertm will allow the user to set is below the power value that can be guaranteed. To avoid error conditions, set the power cap above the power used by the system at maximum load. See the EnergyScaletm white paper at the link above for more information on how to set the power cap.

Note 2: The Exhaust Heat Index (EHI), as shown on Active Energy Managertm, may read up to 21 degrees lower than the actual exhaust air temperature.

4.0 How to Determine Currently Installed Firmware Level

You can view the server's current firmware level on the Advanced System Management Interface (ASMI) Welcome pane. It appears in the top right corner. Example: EL320_093.

5.0 Downloading the Firmware Package

The firmware is located at the web site:

http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/firmware/gjsn

Follow the instructions on the web page. You must read and agree to the license agreement to obtain the firmware packages.

Note: If your HMC is not internet-connected you will need to download the new firmware level to a CD-ROM or ftp server.

6.0 Installing the Firmware

The method used to install new firmware will depend on the release level of firmware which is currently installed on your server. The release level can be determined by the prefix of the new firmware's filename.

Example: ELXXX_YYY_ZZZ

Where XXX = release level


HMC Managed Systems

Instructions for installing firmware updates and upgrades on systems managed by an HMC can be found at
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/scope/hw/topic/ipha1/updateschapter.htm

Systems not Managed by an HMC

p Systems

Instructions for installing firmware on systems that are not managed by an HMC can be found at http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/scope/hw/topic/ipha5/fix_serv_firm_kick.htm

i Systems

See "Server Firmware: Update Policy Set to Operating System", http://www-912.ibm.com/s_dir/slkbase.nsf/ibmscdirect/31B3272F48FDEAF38625746C0062665C


7.0 Change History


Date
 Description
Feb  11, 2010
 - Service Processor flash memory errors section revised in Section 2.1.
- Updating system firmware from EL320_031 or EL320_040 directly to EL320_101 is DISRUPTIVE.