• •V1.00 

There are three images included:

.pnor (Host image)

.bin (BMC image)

pUpdate (tool binary)

This section specifies the "Minimum ipmitool Code Level" required by the System Firmware to perform firmware installations and managing the system.  Open Power requires ipmitool level v1.8.15 to execute correctly on the V1.00 firmware.

Verify your ipmitool level on your linux workstation using the following commands:

bash-4.1$ ipmitool -V

ipmitool version 1.8.15

If you need to update or add impitool to your Linux workstation , you can compile ipmitool (current level 1.8.15) for Linux as follows from the Sourceforge:

If you feel that it is necessary to downgrade the firmware on your system to an earlier release level, please contact your next level of support.

Concurrent Firmware Updates not available for LC servers.

Concurrent system firmware update is not supported on LC 8001 servers.

The xxx.pnor  file updates the primary side of the PNOR.  The yyy.bin updates the primary side of the BMC only.  The  golden sides are unchanged.

Note: The Checksum can be found by running the Linux/Unix/AIX md5sum command against the file (all 32 characters of the checksum are listed), ie: md5sum xxx.pnor.  

After a successful update to the firmware level V1.00 , the PNOR components and BMC should be at the following levels.  The ipmitool "fru" command can be used to display FRU ID 47 and the ipmitool "mc info" command can be used to display the BMC level.

Note:  FRU information for the PNOR level does not show the updated levels via the fru command until the system has been booted once at the updated level.

PNOR firmware levels from FRU ID 47 inventory list for driver:  

FRU Device Description : System Firmware (ID 47)

 Product Name          : OpenPOWER Firmware

 Product Version       : SUPERMICRO-P8DTU-V1.00.GA-20160823

 Product Extra         :  op-build-c0a5f63

 Product Extra         :  buildroot-fda20bd

 Product Extra         :  hostboot-70eb852-6aea96d

 Product Extra         :  occ-1093bf9

 Product Extra         :  skiboot-5.1.15-0949fd2

 Product Extra         :  linux-4.4.6-openpower1-a0f1f5e

 Product Extra         :  petitboot-c005b17-6c9be4a

 Product Extra         :  p8dtu-xml-1d1210a

BMC Level:                        

Display BMC firmware level using the "ipmitool mc info | grep Firmware" command:

Firmware Revision         : 1.13

–Ubuntu 14.04.04

–Ubuntu 16.04

–Ubuntu 16.04 / KVM

–Cent OS

IBM Power LC 8001 servers supports Linux which provides a UNIX like implementation across many computer architectures.  Linux supports almost all of the Power System I/O and the configurator verifies support on order.  For more information about the software that is available on IBM Power Systems, see the Linux on IBM Power Systems website:

 http://www.ibm.com/systems/power/software/linux/index.html

The Linux operating system is an open source, cross-platform OS. It is supported on every Power Systems server IBM sells. Linux on Power Systems is the only Linux infrastructure that offers both scale-out and scale-up choices.  One supported version of Linux on the IBM Power LC 8001 servers  is Ubuntu Server  16.04 for IBM POWER8.  For more information about Ubuntu Server for Ubuntu for POWER8 see the following website:

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server/power8

Another supported version of Linux on the Power LC 8001 servers is  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2  and later releases, in the LE mode.  For additional questions about the availability of this release and supported Power servers, consult the Red Hat Hardware Catalog at https://hardware.redhat.com.

For information about the PowerLinux Community, see the following website:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/group/tpl

For information about the features and external devices that are supported by Linux, see this website:

http://www.ibm.com/systems/power/software/linux/index.html

Use one of the following commands at the Linux command prompt to determine the current Linux level:

• •cat /proc/version 

• •uname -a 

The output string from the command will provide the Linux version level.

On Ubuntu Linux, perform command  dpkg -l "opal-prd".  The output shows whether the package is installed on your system by marking it with ii (installed) and un (not installed).

This package provides a daemon to load and run the OpenPower firmware's Processor Recovery Diagnostics binary. This is responsible for run-time maintenance of Power hardware.  

If the package is not installed on your system, the following command can be run on Ubuntu to install it:

sudo apt-get install opal-prd

On Red Hat Linux, perform command "rpm -qa | grep -i opal-prd ".  The command output indicates the package is installed on your system if the rpm for opal-prd is found and displayed.  This package provides a daemon to load and run the OpenPower firmware's Processor Recovery Diagnostics binary. This is responsible for run-time maintenance of Power hardware.   If the package is not installed on your system, the following command can be run on Red Hat to install it:

        sudo yum update opal-prd

Before using the pUpdate command on the host,  make sure that the ipmi driver is loaded in the kernel and the ipmi service is started.

Note: For updates that use the "usb" or "bt" pUpdate option, you must use the root user ID and password to log in to the host operating system. After you log in to the host operating system, ensure that the IPMI service is activated.

# chkconfig ipmi on

# service ipmi start

For more information about activating the IPMI service, see the OpenIPMI Driver: https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/POWER8/p8eih/p8eih_ipmi_open_driver.htm

For in-band update, use the following "-i usb" invocation of pUpdate:

BMC update:  "pUpdate -f bmc.bin -i usb", where bmc.bin is the name and location of the BMC image file.

PNOR update:  "pUpdate -pnor pnor.bin -i usb", where pnor.bin is the name and location of the PNOR image file.

If the in-band update fails on the BMC, use the recovery option with the Block Transfer (bt) invocation of pUpdate:

BMC update: "pUpdate -f bmc.bin -i bt -r y" where bmc.bin is the name  and location of the BMC image file.

PNOR update:" pUpdate -pnor pnor.bin -i bt " where pnor.bin is the name and location of the PNOR image file.

For more information on BMC recovery steps, refer to the following link in the IBM Knowledge Center:

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/POWER8/p8eis/p8eis_console_problem.htm

If the host is not booted, a network connection can be made to the BMC and an out-of-band update done with the following LAN invocation from a Linux companion system:

BMC update: " pUpdate -f bmc.bin -i lan -h xx.xx.xx.xx yyy -u ADMIN -p ADMIN -r y" where bmc.bin is the name and location of the BMC image file, xx.xx.xx.xx is the IP address of the BMC, and yyy is the port number of the BMC.

PNOR update:  "pUpdate -pnor pnor.bin -i lan -h xx.xx.xx.xx -u ADMIN -p ADMIN " where pnor.bin is the name  and location of the PNOR image file and xx.xx.xx.xx is the IP address of the BMC.

For more details on how to use the pUpdate utility, refer to the following link:

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/POWER8/p8eit/p8eit_update_firmware_pupdate.htm

For more details on how to use the diagnostic utilities,  refer to the following link:

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/POWER8/p8eit/p8eit_diags_kickoff.htm

The system firmware is a combination of the BMC firmware and the PNOR firmware. To update the system firmware, update both the BMC firmware and the PNOR firmware by using the BMC.

Note: System firmware update from the BMC Web GUI is only supported on Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers.

Complete the following steps to update the BMC firmware:

1.        Log in to the BMC by entering the user name and password. Then, press Enter.

2.        From the Maintenance list on the BMC dashboard, select Firmware Update.

3.        In the Firmware Update window, select Enter Update Mode. Click OK.

4.        In the Firmware Upload window, choose the .bin file from your local system folder and click Upload Firmware. Wait for the file to be uploaded. Then, click OK.

5.        The existing and new versions of the BMC firmware are displayed. Ensure that the Preserve Configuration check box and the Preserve SDR check box are selected. Click Start Upgrade.

Note: You cannot perform other activities by using the BMC interface until the firmware update is complete.

6.        The upgrade progress of the firmware update is displayed. After the firmware update is complete, the system is restarted.

7.        After the restart of the system is complete, verify the firmware revision level in the System menu of the BMC dashboard.

Complete the following steps to update the PNOR firmware:

1.        Log in to the BMC by entering the user name and password. Then, press Enter.

2.        From the Maintenance list on the dashboard, select PNOR Update.

3.        In the PNOR Upload window, choose the .pnor file from your local system folder and click Upload PNOR. Wait for the file to be uploaded. Then, click OK.

4.        The existing and new dates of the PNOR firmware are displayed. Click Start Upgrade.

Note: You cannot perform other activities by using the BMC interface until the PNOR update is complete.

5.        The progress of the PNOR update is displayed. After the PNOR update is completed, the system is restarted.

For more information on updating the firmware using the BMC, refer to the following link:

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/POWER8/p8eit/p8eit_update_firmware_bmc.htm

Firmware level for these devices can be checked using OS (Linux) utility “ethtool” as follows:

ethtool -i <device>

The service processor, or baseboard management controller (BMC), provides a hypervisor and operating system-independent layer that uses the robust error detection and self-healing functions that are built into the POWER8 processor and memory buffer modules. Open power application layer (OPAL) is the system firmware in the stack of POWER8 processor-based Linux-only servers.

https://github.com/open-power/skiboot

The ipmitool is a utility for managing and configuring devices that support IPMI. It provides a simple command-line interface to the service processor.  You can install the ipmitool from the Linux distribution packages in your workstation, sourceforge.net, or another server (preferably on the same network as the installed server). For example, in Ubuntu, use this command:

$ sudo apt-get install ipmitool

For installing ipmitool from sourceforge, please see section 1.1 "Minimum ipmitool Code Level".

For more information about ipmitool, there are several good references for ipmitool commands:

1. 1.The man page  

2. 2.The built-in command line help provides a list of IPMItool commands:
   # ipmitool help 

3. 3.You can also get help for many specific IPMItool commands by adding the word help after the command:
   # ipmitool channel help 

4. 4. For  a list of common ipmitool commands and help on each, you may use the following link:  
   www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/linuxonibm/liabp/liabpcommonipmi.htm 

    

To connect to your host system with IPMI, you need to know the IP address of the server and have

a valid password. To power on the server with the ipmitool, follow these steps:

1. Open a terminal program.

2. Power on your server with the ipmitool:

ipmitool -I lanplus -H fsp_ip_address -P ipmi_password power on

3. Activate your IPMI console:

ipmitool -I lanplus -H fsp_ip_address -P ipmi_password sol activate

Ubuntu KVM is configured by installing the missing virtualization packages (qemu-user qemu-utils cloud-image-utils qemu-system-ppc qemu-slof libvirt-bin numactl); adding users in a KVM group; disabling the SMT mode of the cpu using the ppc64_cpu tool; and enabling the KVM module in the kernel.  For more information on how to complete these steps, refer to this link in the Ubuntu wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ppc64el/CommonQuestions#How_to_use_Ubuntu_as_a_hypervisor.3F  

IBM PowerKVM is not supported on the 8001 servers.

Note: Power S821LC and  S822LC  8001 servers and their KVM options do not support AIX or IBM i guest VMs and cannot be managed by a HMC

For additional questions about the availability of this release and supported Power servers, consult the Red Hat Hardware Catalog at https://hardware.redhat.com.

Overview

Use the information found in http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/linuxonibm/liabw/liabwkickoff.htm  to install Linux, in this case Ubuntu, on a non-virtualized (bare metal) IBM Power LC server.  Note that the choice of PowerKVM is offered in the link but that is not a supported OS for the 8001 servers.

 The Ubuntu installer is available for download for specific Linux levels on Power Systems. For information about which systems support Ubuntu, see Supported Linux distributions for POWER8 Linux on Power systems at https://ibm.biz/BdEH5t.