topic Re: Obtaining firmware revisions in Operating System - OpenVMS

Obtaining firmware revisions

Kris Clippeleyr — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 09:06:30 GMT

Hi guys,

One for the weekend.

We have some software that retrieves the version from the various software products installed on our systems.
One of the data items collected (at least for the Alphas) is the version of the PAL code and of the SRM
(via f$getsyi("PALCODE_VERSION") and
f$getsyi("CONSOLE_VERSION"))

We want to do a similar thing for our Itanium (rx2600). With VMS 8.2 installed, the f$getsyi("PALCODE_VERSION") returns "1.1"; the f$getsyi("CONSOLE_VERSION") returns "Unknown".
Not that useful.
Using ANALYZE/SYSTEM, and then CLUE CONFIG, I see on the 2nd page:

BIOS Version 02.31

That's the version for the so-called "system firmware". But no mention of the MP or BMC firmware versions.

Digging in some internal data structures, I noticed quite some difference in the CPU_SLOT data struct. In there is indeed stored the "slot$b_pal_maj_rev" & "slot$b_pal_min_rev". The value of these fields are meaningful on an Alpha, and contain 1 on an Itanium (only natural, since an Itanium has no real PAL). The Itanium version of CPU_SLOT has also the fields:
slot$iw_bmc_fw_min_rev
slot$iw_bmc_fw_maj_rev
slot$iw_mp_fw_min_rev
slot$iw_mp_fw_maj_rev
slot$iw_sys_fw_min_rev
slot$iw_sys_fw_maj_rev

And now the questions:
1. Where does SDA retrieve the "BIOS version"?
2. AFAIK, the new fields mentioned above all contain zeroes. Are they going to be used someday?
3. In general is there a way to retrieve the version of the "BIOS", MP & BMC programmatically under VMS on Itanium (and no I do not want to parse the output of CLUE CONFIG).

Thanx for any replies,
Kris (aka Qkcl)

Btw. I won't be consulting this forum next week, so assigning points will have to wait a bit.

Re: Obtaining firmware revisions

Volker Halle — Sun, 10 Apr 2005 11:37:23 GMT

Kris,

if you follow the SLOT$IQ_SAL_MEM_PA (physical address of SAL memory space) pointer, you can examine this type of data with:

SDA> EXA/PHYS xxxxxxxx+1fc0;500

(at least on our rx2600)

Volker.

Re: Obtaining firmware revisions

Kris Clippeleyr — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 02:52:05 GMT

Volker,

Thanx for the tip. Following SLOT$IQ_SAL_MEM_PA I indeed found the info displayed by SDA.
However, what I need is a way to find this info by means of a program (written in C for instance).

Anyone out there has any ideas/hints?

Thanx,
Kris (aka Qkcl)

Re: Obtaining firmware revisions

Jan van den Ende — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 14:47:32 GMT

Not an idea, but a question.

How to get this info from DCL?

Lexical would be fantastic of course, but I can live with a PIPE-&-SDA construct...

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

Re: Obtaining firmware revisions

Kris Clippeleyr — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 15:01:45 GMT

Jan,

How to get this info from DCL?

Lexical would be fantastic of course, ...

Personally I think that the lexical function f$getsyi("CONSOLE_VERSION") should be "fixed" on Itanium. If that beast can return and the PAL version, and the "console" version for Alpha, and SDA can find the "BIOS" version on Itanium, then I don't understand why f$getsyi("CONSOLE_VERSION") returns "Unknown".

Regards,
Kris (aka Qkcl)