Itanium - Loading Offline-Diagnostics into HPSP partition

[S.Rider]

I'm guessing from following command and the Offline-Diagnostics have NOT been loaded into the HPSP partition on our latest Itanium SuperDomes.

# efi_ls -d /dev/rdsk/c14t0d0s3
FileName Last Modified Size
total space 418598912 bytes, free space 418578432 bytes

Is there a way to load up the HPSP partition without having to boot the CD ?

[Torsten.]

HI,

according to the readme file on the source cd you need to boot from the cd and run the installer. But IMO you only need to keep this CD and use a current copy if needed.

[KathyL1 · Accepted solution]

Definitely - I've been updating the HPSP Partition on the primary boot and alternate boot disks on all my Itanium servers in this way for years!!

In fact - you only need to use the ODE CD the first time so that you can extract the contents of the EFI folder.

This is what I do:
1. Mount the ODE CD and copy the EFI folder to the hard drive (eg, to /tmp/ODE).

2. Determine which devices have been configured as boot disks using the following command:
lvlnboot -v | grep 'Boot Disk' | awk -F's2' '{print $1}'

Results similar to the following will be displayed:
lvlnboot -v | grep 'Boot Disk' | awk -F's2' '{print $1}'
/dev/dsk/c2t1d0
/dev/dsk/c3t2d0

Make a note of the block device file names for the boot disks
(eg, /dev/dsk/c2t1d0, /dev/dsk/c3t2d0)

3. Confirm that the HPSP exists on each boot disk listed and that it is 400Mb in size. The HPSP resides in section 3 of the boot disk. Use the diskinfo command with the character device file names to determine the size of the HPSP on each boot disk identified in the previous step:
diskinfo /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0s3 | grep size
diskinfo /dev/rdsk/c3t2d0s3 | grep size

The value of size: for each disk should be 409600 Kbytes

4. Initialise the HPSP of one boot disk to ensure that the previous version of the ODE is removed:
efi_fsinit -d /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0s3

5. Copy the contents of the EFI folder to the HPSP of the boot disk that was initialised in the previous step:
efi_cp -d /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0s3 -r /tmp/ODE/EFI /

6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for the second boot disk.

7. To list the contents of the HPSP issue the following command (the "Last Modified" date is when the files in the HPSP were last updated):
efi_ls -d /dev/rdsk/c2t1d0s3


Once I have copied the ODE EFI folder to the hard drive of one server I then copy this folder to all the other servers and repeat the update process - this saves the hassle of trying to get outages to boot 20+ servers (and removes the need to send ODE boot CDs to remote sites) so that the ODE can be updated!!

Note: This process does NOT add the ODE boot options for the EFI Boot Manager menu. However, you can manually add them the next time you restart the server. To do this you will need to:
1. Select the "Boot Option Maintenance Menu"
2. Select "Add a Boot Option"
3. Select Part 3 on the relevant IA64_EFI boot disk
4. Select the EFI -> HP -> DIAG -> ODE -> ODE.EFI file
5. Enter a description for the boot option (eg, Boot from HPSP - Disk 1) - the other options can be left as default
6. Save the changes to the NVRAM

If you need to boot ODE and there is no ODE menu item (or there is a menu item but it doesn't work) you can do the following:
1. Select the "Boot Option Maintenance Menu"
2. Select "Boot From a File"
3. Select Part 3 on the relevant IA64_EFI boot disk
4. Select the EFI -> HP -> DIAG -> ODE -> ODE.EFI file (this will lanuch ODE)


Kathy Leslie
Canberra, Australia