[rescue] Sun / Linux LX50

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Wednesday, September 18, 2002 at 16:12:47 (-0700), vraptor at employees.org wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [rescue] Sun / Linux LX50
>
> If you're going to spend $2800 for a Sun branded
> x86 box running Linux, what's another $350 to
> be able to manage it completely remotely?

Well, simply put it's $350 too much.

If Sun have not tweaked the BIOS for proper console support in the LX50
then perhaps they really are trying to make a point to just how
brain-dead PC-class hardware is, even when you wrap it up in a nice
rack-mount box and present it as a server.

After all their new SunFire V100 and V120's have not only the normal
awsome OpenFirmware with direct serial port support but also have a new
"Lights Out Management" processor that's always on (when the power cord
is connected, just like the baseboard management controller in newer
Intel servers, except this one is plain and pure ASCII commands), and
you can control the main power and reset lines and various other
functions directly, as well as examine the environment sensors and so
on.  It's quite awsome.  I was hoping the LX50 would at least have
proper serial support for the BIOS, if not a serial command-line
controlled BMC as well (they claim it has full IPMI, DMI, and SNMP
support, so it probably has a BMC), but from what I can see from the
online propoganda it doesn't actually do the serial console thing.

I happen to have a client's V100 in the machine room right now (it was
supposed to be a Netra T1 on which NetBSD was to be installed, but
NetBSD-1.6 won't boot on the V100 for some reason).  If you have the LOM
and system console on the serial port you can always get the LOM's
attention by typing the escape sequence ("#." normally):

# uname -a
SunOS gambit 5.9 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,UltraAX-i2
# 
lom>help
The following commands are supported:
alarmon
alarmoff
check
console
environment
faulton
faultoff
help
poweron
poweroff
reset
shutdown
show
version
set
break
bootmode
loghistory
showlogs
consolehistory
chist
date
showdate
logout
userpassword
useradd
userdel
userperm
usershow
lom>environment
Fault  OFF
Alarm1 OFF
Alarm2 OFF
Alarm3 ON

Fans:
1 fan1 OK speed 81%

PSUs:
1 OK

Temperature sensors:
1 Enclosure 31degC OK

Overheat sensors:
1 CPU OK

Circuit breakers:
1 USB0 OK
2 USB1 OK
3 SCC OK

Supply rails:
1 5V OK
2 3V3 OK
3 +12V OK
4 -12V OK
5 VDD core OK

lom>showlogs
Eventlog:
   +0h0m52s host power on
   +0h45m17s host power off
   +0h46m25s host power on
   +2h3m48s host reset
   +3h18m1s host reset
   +3h19m35s host reset
   +4h32m40s host reset
   +4h39m14s host reset
   +4h46m51s host reset
   +1d+2h46m44s host reset
lom>console
#       
# 

(you can't send a serial BREAK to get to OpenFirmware on this model --
you have to type the "break" LOM command :-)

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

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