Event Logs; Ipmi Watchdog; Partition Id; Console - HP Integrity Superdome 2 16-socket User Manual

parmodify
parstatus
cplxmodify
vparcreate
vparremove
vparmodify
vparboot
vparreset
vparstatus
icapmodify
icapstatus
plg9hlth
seedGlobalMca
perf-mode
MPEventGen (Intel Itanium 9500 Series processors).

Event logs

Forward Progress Logs and System Event Logs normally captured by the server management system
will not be updated during the firmware update process.

IPMI Watchdog

During the online complex firmware update process, the IPMI watchdog timeout will be disabled.
It will be re-enabled when the system wakes up. The OS will discover the watchdog timer has
disappeared after the firmware update process has completed, and will recreate it by design.

Partition ID

The # getconf _CS_PARTITION_IDENT command (which returns HP-UX partition ID), is used
for licensing. It is a concatenation of UUID + nPartition # + vPar #. UUID is continuously available
from the SMBIOS table. The latter two (nPartition, vPar #s) are obtained using an IPMI call which
may fail during the firmware update process. HP-UX caches this information after the very first call
to getconf _CS_PARTITION_IDENT, so this command would only fail if it had never been run
before the firmware update process began.

Console

When the firmware update is in progress, the OS console cannot be serviced on the server
management side. Since all active sessions to the OA CLI and GUI interfaces are closed at the
beginning of the firmware update process, the OS console cannot be actively viewed during this
process. The OS console is normally a quiet interface with little character traffic; however there
are conditions (OS panics, for example) where the character buffer could potentially fill up during
the firmware update process. If the console character buffer is full during an active online complex
firmware update, new incoming characters will be dropped so the console does not hang on the
OS side. This potential for console character loss does not extend to kernel memory (dmesg) or
impact the OS syslog or crashdump area in any way, so this should not inhibit OS problem
diagnosis in the unlikely event something unexpected occurs at the OS level. The characters captured
in the buffer will be drained once the firmware update process completes, and console operation
will return to normal.
Online complex firmware update on Superdome 2 179