[geeks] Sun Fire V210: A New Low in SPARC Servers?

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Fri, 3 Feb 2006, Scott Howard wrote:

> No.  They are enabled on every _power cycle_, not every boot. Of
> course, it's fully configurable - the sticker is just there to alert
> you to the fact it changed.

Ah.  It'll probably end up being one of those things I only remember
that I want to change after I've committed a reboot.

> Wow..  I've set up dozens (over a hundred I'd say) of systems with
> ALOMs, and I've never see that happen.

It turned out the dead systems had fried cardreaders, somehow.  They
worked great with cards containing no configuration data but barfed as
soon as they had anything to send back.  The service engineer replaced
the cardreaders, and the machines work fine now.

Maybe I'll try enabling remote-administration on the rest now; at least
it's a good smoke-test for dodgy cardreaders.

>> And there it hangs.  I can't even break back into OBP; I have to get
>> ALOM to power-cycle the system.
>
> Snoop is your friend! What is the last thing it tries to access over
> the network before the hang?

I wish I knew.  The JumpStart server is running Linux, and something has
changed that I can't JS my Ultra 80, either.  I'll swing dhcpd to point
back to my Solaris JumpStart server to see if it's a configuration
screw-up or Yet Another Linux NFS Bug(tm).

> "boot -v" might also give you some more info.

It probes the hardware tree and locks solid, on both the V210s and the
Ultra80s.

So, okay, we got some lemony hardware and the JumpStart lossage appears
to be due to the typically insufficient amounts of dead-chicken-waving
one has to do for NFS root-booting to DTRT.  If the machines otherwise
behave as-advertised, I really can't knock them.  They're fast and tiny,
but those four 13000 (!!) rpm[0] fans make them decidedly not office-
friendly.


[0] At least, that's what the datasheet from Delta says; they're
     probably not spun all the way up during normal operation.
-- 
Jonathan Patschke    )   "A man who never dreams goes slowly mad."
Elgin, TX           (      --Thomas Dolby, "Valley of the Mind's Eye"