Power6 Entry Systems Firmware

12/16/09

System firmware changes that affect all systems

• A problem was fixed that prevented an automatic reboot after some types of memory-related crashes.
• A problem was fixed that caused SRC B7005603 to be erroneously logged during any type of concurrent maintenance operation on an enclosure.
• The firmware was enhanced such that SRCs B181F126, B181F127, and B181F129 are correctly handled, and no longer cause unnecessary calls home to be made.
• A problem was fixed that caused the system to hang with SRCs B182953C, B182954C, and B17BE434 being logged.
• A problem was fixed that caused SRC 10009135, followed by 10009139, to be erroneously logged.  These SRCs indicate an system power control network (SPCN) loop is being broken, then re-established. 

• On 1-way model E4A, M15, and M25 systems with nonfunctional core 0 chips, a problem was fixed that caused processor runtime diagnostic (PRD) SRCs such as B181D10B and B114E550 to be erroneously logged during a concurrent system firmware update.

09/23/09
 

System firmware changes that affect all systems

• DEFERRED:  The firmware was enhanced to eliminate correctable errors (CEs) being erroneously logged  against the memory bus with SRC B124E504.  This change affects only 9117-MMA systems equipped with 

 4.2GHz quad core processor cards (FC 7540) and all 8234-EMA systems.  This change is not critical.
• The firmware was enhanced such that SRC B181F126 is correctly managed, and no longer calls home  unnecessarily for this problem.

08/20/09

System firmware changes that affect all systems

• DEFERRED:  This fix corrects the handling of a specific processor instruction sequence that was generated on a particular heavily-tuned High Performance Computing (HPC) application. This specific instruction sequence has the potential to produce an incorrect result. This instruction sequence has only been observed in a single HPC application.  However, it is strongly recommended that you apply this fix.

• On systems running system firmware EL340_075 and Active Memory Sharing, a problem was fixed that might have caused a partition to lose I/O entitlement after the partition was moved from one system to another using PowerVM Mobility.
•  On systems running system firmware EL340_075 and Active Memory Sharing, a problem was fixed that might have caused a partition to fail to boot with SRC B700F103 if the partition had more than 24 virtual processors assigned to it.
• On systems with F/C 5802 or 5877 drawers attached, a problem was fixed that prevented an I/O slot's power LED from accurately reflecting the state of the I/O slot in a 5802 or 5877 drawer, under certain circumstances.
•  On systems with external I/O towers attached, the firmware was enhanced so that the system will not crash when SRC B7006981 is logged for certain types of I/O hardware failures. 

05/26/09

New features and functions:

- Support for the 4.7 GHz processor module on models E4A, M25 and M15.

- Support for the 5.0 GHz processor module of the models E8A, M50, and Power 550 servers.

- DEFERRED: Support for F/C 5802 (19" I/O drawer) and 5803 (24" I/O drawer).

Attention: After this level of firmware is installed, the platform must be powered off, then powered on, before the 5802 or 5803 I/O drawer is added to the system.

- DEFERRED: Support for POWER VM Active Memory Sharing.

Attention: After this level of firmware is installed, the platform must be powered off, then powered on to activate the POWER VM Active Memory Sharing function.

Attention: If EL340_075 has been installed, and the new POWER VM Active Memory Sharing function has been activated, and you want to back-level the system firmware, the active memory sharing pool must be deactivated and deleted prior to back-leveling the system firmware. IBM does not recommend back-leveling the system firmware.

System firmware changes that affect all systems:

• 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.
• A problem was fixed that caused the detailed data at the end of an "early power off warning type 5" AIX error log entry to be filled with invalid data instead of zeros.
• The firmware was enhanced so that a call home will be made if the hypervisor issues a "terminate immediate" interrupt.
• The firmware was enhanced so that the service processor only logs SRC B1A38B24 when a valid network set up error is found. The callouts for this SRC were also improved.
• The firmware was enhanced so that SRCs B181720D, B1818A13, and B1818A0F, and occasionally a service processor dump, will not be generated when the service processor's two Ethernet interfaces are on the same subnet. (This is an invalid configuration.)
• A problem was fixed that caused a system with I/O drawers attached to crash, and a SYSDUMP to be taken, with SRCs B7000103 and SRC B181D138 being logged.  Another symptom of this failure is informational SRC B7006970 entries constantly posting in the iqyylog.log.

• A problem was fixed that caused the migration of a partition with more that 900 virtual slots defined, from a system running firmware EL320 to a system running firmware EL340, to fail.
• On systems with external drawers or towers attached to 12X I/O adapters, a problem was fixed that prevented the drawers or towers from powering up and being seen by the firmware.
• On systems running firmware release EL340, a problem was fixed that caused data in the platform dump to be invalid.
• On systems using on/off (temporary) memory capacity on demand (COD), the firmware was enhanced to improve memory COD's interaction with other tools (such as Inventory Scout in AIX), and to make the billing process easier. 

03/09

04/20/09

System firmware changes that affect all systems:

• HIPER: 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.
• 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 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.
• A problem was fixed that might have caused the system to crash when a processor was dynamically removed when the system was running.
• The firmware was enhanced such that VPD data corruption in the Anchor (VPD) will be corrected by the firmware, rather than having to have the Anchor card replaced.
• A problem was fixed that caused a partition being migrated to crash on the target system.
• On systems running the EL340 release of system firmware, a problem was fixed that caused an abort code to be logged in the virtual input/output system (VIOS) error log on the source system after a successful partition migration.
• A problem was fixed that caused a partition being migrated to become unresponsive on the target system when firmware-assisted dump was enabled.
• The firmware was enhanced so that SRC BA210012 will not generate a call home when logged.
• A problem was fixed that caused hardware to be deconfigured when the system encountered network errors, even though the SRCs were being logged as informational.

• On systems with external I/O drawers, a problem was fixed that could cause the system to hang on checkpoint C700406E during a "warm" reboot (a reboot in which the processor drawer is power-cycled but the I/O drawers are not).
• On systems running system firmware release EL340 and IBM i partitions, a problem was fixed that caused message CPF9E7F, CPF9E2D or CPF9E5E (which indicates a licensing key problem) to be received by the IBM i partitions when the number of physical processors was greater than the number of IBM i licenses.
• On systems with virtual fiber channel disks, a problem was fixed that prevented the system management services (SMS) from displaying the virtual fiber channel disks if the virtual fiber channel server reported that any of them were reserved. 

11/21/08

New Features and Functions:

• Support was added for the converged System i/System p model 520, 8203-E4A and the converged System i/System p model 550.
• Support for the 8 GB fiber channel adapter, F/C 5735.
• Support for a virtual tape device.
• Support for USB flash memory storage devices.
• Support in the service processor firmware for IPv6.
• Support in the hypervisor for three types of hardware performance monitors.
• Support for installing AIX and Linux using the integrated virtualization manager (IVM).
• Support for the dual-port 12x Infiniband adapter, F/C 5608.
• Support for an enhanced power and thermal management capability - lowering the fan speed to conserve power when the power usage of the system is low.
• Support for enhanced power management, including dynamic voltage and frequency slewing. 
• On systems running AIX, support was added for an enhanced power and thermal management capability. When static power save mode is selected, AIX will "fold" processors to free processors which can then be put in the "nap" state.
• On model E8A systems, support was added for CIM (common information model) power instrumentation to the service processor. 
• On systems that have temperature and power management device (TPMD) hardware, support was added for a "soft" power cap.

• A problem was fixed that prevented the default partition environment in the advanced system management interface (ASMI) power on/off menu from being set to "i5/OS" when it was blank.
• On all model M50, M25, M15, E8A, and E4A systems, a problem was fixed the prevented RB keyword0 from being set in the advanced system management interface (ASMI) system keywords menu.
• The firmware was enhanced so that SRC B1xx3409, which indicates an invalid state change (such as pushing the power on button twice quickly) will be logged as informational instead of predictive, and will not call home.
• A problem was fixed that caused a service processor dump to be taken and SRC B181EF88 to be logged, even though the operation of the system was not affected.
• A problem was fixed that prevented some of the service processor error log entries from being seen when the advanced system management interface (ASMI) menus were accessed on a TTY terminal.
• A problem was fixed that caused the system to crash and a SYSDUMP to be taken, with SRCs B170E540, B181D138, or B700F105, with a bad PCI-E adapter installed and in use, or while running a heavy network load.

• On systems that are managed by a hardware management console (HMC), a problem was fixed that, under certain rare circumstances, caused SRC B181E411 to be logged, a call home to be made, and a service processor dump to be taken.
• On systems that are not managed by a hardware management console (HMC), a problem was fixed that caused the service processor to lose its connection to a serial-attached TTY terminal. A dump was taken, and SFC B170100A was logged, when this problem occurred.
• In networks using a time server, a problem was fixed that caused the date on a client system to be reset to 1969 if the client system lost power.

05/04/09

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.

• 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.

09/24/08

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.

• 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. 

06/06/08

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".

• HIPER: A problem was fixed in the hypervisor that might cause a partition migration to fail.

Mfg Only
05/09/08

• 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.

Mfg Only
05/06/08

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:

• 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:

• 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: 

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.
• A problem was fixed that caused a system to crash, and a SYSDUMP to be taken, with SRCs B7000200, then SRC B700F103, being logged, when configuring an HEA adapter.  In order for this problem to occur, all of the following must be true:

      - A partition running Linux is using an host Ethernet adapter (HEA).
      - The max partition memory must equal the cur partition memory.
     - The current value of the partition memory must be between 4GB and 10GB, and not an integer.

• 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. 

06/09/08

• 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.

02/29/08

New Features and Functions:

• Support for the 8203-E4A system was added.

• 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.

• 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 Manager^tm, a problem was fixed that caused the Exhaust Heat Index (EHI) to read up to 21 degrees lower than the actual exhaust air temperature.

02/08/08

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 EnergyScale^tm and Active Energy Manager^tm. For more information on the energy management features now available, please see the EnergyScale^tm white paper . 

Note 1: The lowest power cap that Active Energy Manager^tm 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 EnergyScale^tm 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 Manager^tm, may read up to 21 degrees lower than the actual exhaust air temperature.