ML530 G2 STATUS LIGHT?

[Seismic]

Does anyone know what the 8 (2 groups of 4) green leds above the 2nd processor indicate? They seem to change as the machine boots.

[Johan Guldmyr]

Hey, supposedly they are the POST diagnostics then.

Have you looked in the user guides/service and maintenance guides?

Some leds are listed in the 'ProLiant Troubleshooting Guide' as well.

[Seismic]

Hi Johan,

Thanks for the response!

Yes I've look in the following documents with no luck:

   225579-002 HP ProLiant ML530 Generation 2 Server Setup and Installation Guide
   281405-004 HP ProLiant ML530 Generation 2 Server Maintenance and Service Guide.

   375445-402 HP ProLiant Servers Troubleshooting Guide.

Thinking they may be the precursor to the port 84/85 codes I tried to look up those code in the following:

   379041-006 HP ProLiant DL580 Generation 3 Server Maintenance and Service Guide.

Would you know of any other areas/document that may shed some light on their meaning as my system does not complete it's POST anymore? In fact it freeze at different parts of the post, never going past the SCSI bus scan. At the moment it's not even getting to the scsi scan, seem as if the problem is getting more consistent.

I'm now thinking one of the IO chips was fried by a used drive that I purchased. Could be the system is either being bombarded by interrupts from one of the IO chips or the [northbridge equivalent] is just dying after a few seconds.

My background both hardware and software. I'm an electronic engineer / computer consultant (programming/sys-admin)t with some 35 years behind me.

[Johan Guldmyr]

Sorry don't know the meaning of those leds or where to find them then :/

If you disconnect the SCSI card/cables does it complete it then?

Reseat the components / minimal config.

Overheating?

[Seismic]

Re minimal config: I brought it down to 1 processors, 1 bank of ram, nothing connected to the system board but the power connectors. I exchanged the ram and processor while at this minimal config level. The results are always the same, very little progress through the POST.

Re heat: The only thing that's seem to be getting warm is the 2nd processor. The 1st seem to stay very cool. This leads me to think that there are a lot of low level interrupt being serviced or something on that processor. Maybe it's stuck in a loop of some sort, but why at various points in the POST. The southbridge is cool and the northbridge(?) is also cool. I wish I had a "pci x" breakout card to see what's actually happening on the bus, but at 33/66 MHz you wouldn't see much.

A starting point would of course be to find out what those leds are for. I'm sure there must be a service manual that describe them but I don't think it's being published on the hp's web site.

[Matti_Kurkela]

Googling for "ML520 G2 maintenance and service guide" seems helpful. This was on the first page of results:

ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/supportinformation/techpubs/maintenance_guides/281405-004.pdf

That document does not mention LEDs like you describe on the system board, but by the your description of their arrangement and POST-time behaviour I suspect they might be a visualization of the BIOS diagnostic port (I/O address 80h). 2 groups of 4 LEDs suggests 2 hexadecimal digits encoded as binary, which is just what the diagnostic port output typically looks like.

Of course I'm just guessing: they might be something completely different.

[Seismic]

Cheers Matti, thanks for replying.

Re: Googling for "ML520 G2 maintenance and service guide" seems helpful. This was on the first page of results:

This is what I wrote in message 3 in this thread:

Yes I've look in the following documents with no luck:

   225579-002 HP ProLiant ML530 Generation 2 Server Setup and Installation Guide
   281405-004 HP ProLiant ML530 Generation 2 Server Maintenance and Service Guide.

   375445-402 HP ProLiant Servers Troubleshooting Guide.

Thinking they may be the precursor to the port 84/85 codes I tried to look up those code in the following:

   379041-006 HP ProLiant DL580 Generation 3 Server Maintenance and Service Guide.

I have the same thinking as yourself that they are some sort of "POST-time/run-time" diagnostics. I also tried to search that ftp site earlier this week for documents but there is no index to the files in the "ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/supportinformation/techpubs/maintenance_guides" directory which are listed by their document number rather than title. I tried going up a few levels in the directory tree to see if there was some sort of index for the files but no luck. It's good that such a site exists, most companies would charge for access like that. I wish that I could get my hand on the source for the bios as it must be documented in there! Now I wish that I hadn't turned down that Compaq contract to work in France 12 years ago as they wanted me to do some low level bit twiddling in some drivers!

[CRidgley]

Please see this document:

HP Proliant ML530 - Identifying LEDs

This is the

ProLiant ML530 - Identifying LEDs

CRidgley at HP

[Johan Guldmyr]

>> CRidgley @HP

I don't think the lights that Seismic is talking about is on that page. I mean these pictures would be in the maintenance guides anyway. Also, the leds Seismic describes are several leds and they are changing during the boot.

The only ones applicable in "ML530 - Identifying LEDs" are the ones next to the cpu slots, but that's only one led (off/amber).

Maybe HP has some more details?

[Seismic]

Johan you're right. I've look at that document before and they are not mentioned there. Also that document is for the 1st generation not the for the G2 which is very different. But CRidgley it did help as I've been thinking of replacing the system board with one for ML570 G2 which is the same board with 2 more zifs for 2 more processors and another slot for another memory board. So I looked for HP ProLiant ML570 G2 Server Series - Identifying LEDs and had a result. Unfortunately that document doesn't mention those leds either. I think HP did bother making one of there documents for the 530G2 because the 570G2 is essentially the same thing with the additions I mentioned above. So the search continues.

This is slightly off topic but maybe I should start a thread: "Replacing ML530G2 system board with a ML570G2 system board?" to explore the feasibility of this?

Again it would be nice to know what these lights are actual reporting.