Power6 High-End System Firmware

06/30/10

System firmware changes that affect all systems:

• DEFERRED: A problem was fixed that could result in a system checkstop while running floating point computations.  Although this is a high-impact problem, it has a very low probability of occurring.
  
• A problem was fixed that caused a call home to be erroneously made with SRC B181E911, and a service processor dump to be taken unnecessarily.
  
• A problem was fixed that caused the HMC to show a status of "Incomplete" for the managed system, and numerous service processor dumps to be generated.
• The firmware was enhanced to improve the callouts when NVRAM corruption is detected in the bulk power controller's (BPC's) service processor.
• On systems running ES350_xxx firmware, a problem was fixed the prevented the reset/reload bit from being set correctly in a service processor error log entry.

03/15/10

System firmware changes that affect all systems:

• HIPER: A problem was fixed that caused the system to crash if the server was running AIX and had a  F/C 5802 or 5877 drawer (in a 19" rack), or F/C 5803 or 5873 drawer (in a 24" rack), attached.
• DEFERRED:   This fix corrects the handling of a specific processor instruction sequence that has the potential to result in undetected data errors.  This specific instruction sequence has only been observed in a small number of highly tuned Floating Point intensive applications.  However, it is strongly recommended that this fix be applied to all POWER6 systems.  This fix has the potential to decrease system performance on applications that make extensive use of floating point divide, square root, or estimate instructions.
  
• A problem was fixed that prevented an SRC from being recorded in the service processor dump produced by a host-initiated reset.
• A problem was fixed that caused SRC 10009135, followed by 10009139, to be erroneously logged.  These SRCs indicate a system power control network (SPCN) loop is being broken, then re-established.
• A problem was fixed that, under certain rare circumstances, caused a partition to hang when being shut down.
• A problem was fixed that caused the system to hang with SRCs B182953C, B182954C and B17BE434 being logged.
• The firmware was enhanced to detect and handle 12X InfiniBand I/O drawer cabling errors better.
• A problem was fixed that, under certain rare circumstances, caused the system to become unresponsive and appear to hang  when page migration occurred on a PCIe slot.

• A problem was fixed that caused a virtual SCSI or virtual fibre channel adapter to be seen by the operating system as not bootable when it was added to a partition using a dynamic LPAR (DLPAR) operation.
• On systems with a F/C 5802 or 5877 drawer attached, a problem was fixed that could impact the performance of a 4-port Ethernet adapter F/C 5272, 5275, 5279, 5280, 5525, 5526, or 5527 installed in that drawer.
• In partitions running AIX or Linux, a problem was fixed that caused the addition of an I/O slot to a partition using a dynamic LPAR (DLPAR) add operation to fail.
• On systems with shared processors, a problem was fixed that caused the partitions to hang and become unresponsive for very short periods of time.
• A problem was fixed that prevented the IPv6 DHCP address from being displayed on the advanced system management interface (ASMI) network configuration screens when IPv6 and DHCP were enabled.  This only occurred on systems with virtual LAN (VLAN) addresses (such as eth0.30, eth0.31), and when IPv6 addresses were assigned to the eth0.xx interface.
• On systems running redundant VIOS partitions, a problem was fixed that prevented Ethernet traffic from being properly bridged between the two partitions.  This problem also prevented shared Ethernet adapter failover from working correctly.

11/23/09

New Features and Functions:

• Support for a USB-attached half-high 5.25" backup device using a removable hard disk drive (HDD).
• Support for a platform dump that is not disruptive.

• A problem was fixed that might cause a concurrent firmware maintenance (CFM) operation to fail repeatedly when a large number of I/O loop errors were being logged during the CFM operation.
• The firmware was enhanced to handle system dumps (SYSDUMPs) larger than 4GB in size.
• On systems running system firmware release ES340, a problem was fixed that caused a dynamic LPAR (DLPAR) operation on memory to fail until the platform was rebooted.
• The firmware was enhanced to improve the performance of the F/C 5732, 5735 , and 5769 PCI-E adapters.
•  The firmware was enhanced such that SRCs B181F126, B181F127, and B181F129 are correctly logged, and no longer calls home unnecessarily for these SRCs.
• A problem was fixed that caused a repair and verify (R&V) operation on the HMC to fail with the message "Exception encountered while rendering panel as HTML".
• The firmware was enhanced such that when a certain type of hardware failure occurs in a bulk power controller (BPC), the appropriate errors will be logged instead of SRCs B1818601 and B1818611, which indicate a firmware failure.
• A problem was fixed that caused SRC B181D312 to be erroneously logged, and a call home to be erroneously made.
• On systems with 24" I/O drawers, a problem was fixed that might cause a partition to crash, with a system reboot required for recovery, when a F/C 5797 or 5798 drawer was concurrently added.
• The firmware was enhanced to more accurately describe the reason memory was deconfigured on the advanced system management interface (ASMI) memory deconfiguration screen.

04/26/10

System firmware changes that affect all systems

• DEFERRED:   This fix corrects the handling of a specific processor instruction sequence that has the potential to result in undetected data errors.  This specific instruction sequence has only been observed in a small number of highly tuned floating point-intensive applications.  However, it is strongly recommended that this fix be applied to all POWER6 systems.  This fix has the potential to decrease system performance on applications that make extensive use of floating point divide, square root, or estimate instructions.
• A problem was fixed that caused SRC B1818A0A to be erroneously logged during a concurrent firmware update.
• The firmware was enhanced such that SRCs B181F126, B181F127, and B181F129 are correctly logged, and no longer cause unnecessary calls home to be made.
• The firmware was enhanced so that SRC B181720D, 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.)
• In partitions running AIX or Linux, a problem was fixed that, under certain rare circumstances, caused the addition an I/O slot to a partition using a dynamic LPAR (DLPAR) add operation to fail.
• 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 B1818902 to be erroneously logged during a firmware installation.
  

• On partitions running AIX or Linux, a problem was fixed that caused a dynamic LPAR (DLPAR) operation to add an I/O slot to fail.
• On systems running redundant VIOS partitions, a problem was fixed that prevented Ethernet traffic from being properly bridged between the two partitions.  This problem also prevented shared Ethernet adapter failover from working correctly.
• On systems using InfiniBand switches for processor clustering, a problem was fixed that caused InfiniBand ports to intermittently drop out.

08/31/09

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.
• HIPER:  A problem was fixed that caused the migration of a partition using shared processors to fail with a reason code of 4180043, or caused the source system to hang or crash.
• A problem was fixed that caused SRC 1000911B to be erroneously logged during a reset/reload of the service processor.

• On systems with 7311-D11, 7314-G30, 5790, or 5796 19" drawers attached, a problem was fixed that caused SRC 10009138 to be erroneously logged.

• A problem was fixed that caused SRC B7005603 to be erroneously logged when a F/C 5802 or 5877 drawer was concurrently added.

05/18/09

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 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.
• The firmware was enhanced so that SRC B1xxE458 (with word 6=0000E42B) will be logged as informational instead of generating a call home.
• A problem was fixed that caused the system to crash, under certain circumstances, with SRC B112E504 being logged, followed by SRC B181C350, when a system dump was initiated.
• A problem was fixed that caused a partition being migrated to become unresponsive on the target system when firmware-assisted dump was enabled.
• 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.
• 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.
• A problem was fixed that caused a partition being migrated to crash on the target system.
• A problem was fixed that might cause a system to crash with SRC B170E504 when a processor was dynamically deconfigured.
• The firmware was enhanced such that when data is written to the VPD (Anchor) card, the results are verified, resulting in fewer VPD cards being replaced.

In systems using InfiniBand switches for processor clustering, a problem was fixed that caused packets to be dropped under certain circumstances.

01/15/09

This level is a disruptive update from any ES330 firmware level. The system should be powered off before installing this level of system firmware. If this level is installed when the system is running, the CECs will be rebooted, causing all partitions to be terminated, and a reboot will be required. 

System firmware changes that affect all systems:

• DEFERRED and HIPER: The system initialization settings were changed to reduce the likelihood of a system crash under extremely rare circumstances.
• 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, B1xxE504, was logged when the reboot failed.
• A problem was fixed that might, if a platform dump occurred, have caused a reset/reload of the service processor, and the platform dump to be corrupted.
• A problem was fixed that caused incorrect field replaceable unit (FRU) part numbers to be returned for the BPF scroll assembly and the UEPO panel.
• A problem was fixed that prevented the system from rebooting if an error occurred during a memory-preserving IPL.
• The firmware was enhanced so that a call home will be made if the hypervisor issues a "terminate immediate" interrupt.
• The firmware's redundant bit steering logic was enhanced to improve performance.
• A problem was fixed that caused the location codes for multi-port PCI adapters, such as the 4-port Ethernet adapters, to be incorrect.
• 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.
• On systems running AIX or Linux, a problem was fixed that, under certain rare circumstances, might cause the operating system to crash.
• 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 rare circumstances, caused the hypervisor to crash when it was booting with SRC B6000103 being logged.
• 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.
• A problem was fixed that, under certain rarely occurring circumstances, caused the system to crash if an L2 or L3 cache failure is not discovered and repaired when it initially occurs.
• A problem was fixed that caused the service processor diagnostics to call out a processor as the failing item, instead of the memory DIMMs, when a large number of memory error correction coding (ECC) errors occurred.
• A problem was fixed that caused the wrong field replaceable unit (FRU) to be called out when SRC B152F109, which indicates a problem with the NVRAM in a bulk power controller (BPC), was logged.
• 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 might cause a default catch to occur when booting from an iSCSI device.

• 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.
• In systems with clustered processors, various problems were fixed in the InfiniBand interconnection networks.
• A problem was fixed that, under certain circumstances, caused an AIX or Linux partition to fail to boot with SRC D200E0AF being logged.
• On systems with external I/O frames, a problem was fixed that might have prevented the firmware from "unthrottling" processors after entering power save mode.

08/28/08

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.
• HIPER: A problem was fixed that caused the system to terminate abnormally with SRC B131E504.
• 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 the location codes of multi-port PCI adapters, such as a 4-port Ethernet card, to be displayed incorrectly.
• A problem was fixed that caused multiple instances of SRC B1818A03 and B1818A0A to be logged erroneously, and multiple calls home to be made, during a frame connection reset.
• A problem was fixed that caused SRC B1819506 to be erroneously generated, and a call home to be made, when service processor (or system controller) error log entries were generated faster than they could be processed.
• A problem was fixed that caused the hardware management console (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.
• 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 prevented a dump file larger than 4 GB from being successfully off-loaded to the hardware management console (HMC).
• On systems with redundant bulk power controllers, a problem was fixed that caused the hardware management console (HMC) to get stuck at "Pending Authentication" for one of the bulk power controllers (BPCs).
• 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.
• In systems with clustered processors, various problems were fixed in the InfiniBand interconnection networks.
• A problem was fixed that caused the location codes of the external InfiniBand ports on a 5791 I/O drawer with the InfiniBand interface to be reported incorrectly on the HMC.
• 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 the might have caused an out-of-memory condition in the hypervisor, with SRC B7000200 being logged.
• A problem was fixed in the thermal management firmware that caused SRCs B1812635 and B1812636 to be logged, and the system or node to run in low power mode when it should have been in nominal, or nominal when it should have been in low power mode.
• A problem was fixed that caused SRC B1818A10 to be erroneously generated after a successful installation of system firmware.
• A problem was fixed that caused the AIX commands "lsmcode" and "diag" to fail after a partition migration.
• 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.
• A problem was fixed that caused the status of the connection between the hardware management console (HMC) and the service processor to be set to an invalid state. This might cause problems when the HMC and service processor tried to communicate.
• A problem was fixed that caused partitions that were being rebooted to hang at D200E0AF after a concurrent firmware update under certain circumstances. 

06/10/08

This level is a disruptive update from the prior level, ES330_018. The system should be powered off before installing this level of system firmware. If this level is installed when the system is running, the CECs will be rebooted, causing all partitions to be terminated, and a reboot will be required. 

System firmware changes that affect all systems:

• 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.
• 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 system controllers and the service processor in the bulk power controller (BPC) to fill up, which results in an out-of-memory condition. When this problem occurred, the system controllers or service processor in the BPC usually performed a reset/reload. This is one possible cause of SRC B1817201 being logged. 
• A problem was fixed in the repair and verify (R and V) function on the HMC that caused an unnecessary shutdown of the processor node when an error was logged against a bulk power regulator (BPR).
• A problem was fixed that caused a partition using a host channel adapter (HCA) or host Ethernet adapter (HEA) to appear to hang (with progress code D200C1FF being displayed) before successfully shutting down. The amount of time the partition appeared to hang depended on the amount of memory assigned to the partition and the usage of HCA or HEA.
• A problem was fixed that prevented the HMC from connecting to the managed system if the HMC's DHCP server IP range is changed when the managed system is running.
• The firmware was enhanced so that the IDs "celogin1" and "celogin2" allow an authorized service provider to log into the bulk power controller (BPC).
• The firmware was enhanced to improve the system memory error recovery.
• The firmware was enhanced so that the contents of /tmp are included when a service processor dump is taken.
• A problem was fixed in the hypervisor that might cause a partition migration to fail.
• The firmware was enhanced so that:
• A failure when writing VPD to a P6 processor will cause the node to be deconfigured rather than terminating the system.
• The failure of a VPD write operation will not corrupt the VPD table, which may lead to unnecessary system down-time and unnecessary FRU replacement.

• On systems using QLogic InfiniBand switches, a problem was fixed that caused the PortInfo:linkWidthActive and PortInfo:linkSpeedActive to be inaccurately stored and displayed on the display of subnet parameters.

05/13/08

• GA Level