L1000 server w/ A6795A FC adapter crashes

[William Shaw]

Hello, I have a problem with an L1000 server in which I have recently installed 2 A6795A fibre channel HBA's. When the HBA's are installed, and the driver loaded, but they are not connected to anything, the system boots up fine. While booted, I connected fibre channel cables to the HBA's and to a fabric switch. The system crashed when I plugged in the cables. And now the amber "attention" light and the red "fault" light blink indefinitely. If I unplug the FC cables, the system will boot up ok, and an ioscan shows that the HBA's are recognized. If I leave the cables plugged in, the system will crash shortly after the boot path is specified, with the last "normal" boot message being "alloc_pdc_pages: Reloctaing PDC from 0x0.... to 0x0... "

So, My questions are:
1. Does anyone have an idea as to why the system crashes when the HBA's are connected to a switch, but boots ok when they are not connected to anything?
And 2. How do I get the flashing amber and red, attention and fault, lights to stop flashing?

Thanks! -Bill

[Michael Tully · Accepted solution]

Hi Bill,

The first I would suggest for your problem, is to have the latest firmware for your server and the latest patch bundle installed.

The 'red' light on the front of the server indicates that there is some sort of hardware fault. This may have to do with the system crash, but usually a system will only display the attention light. For this I would place a hardware call with HP.

From your system console:
control B
From the Service Proceessor Login Prompt, press the enter key until the GSP> prompt appears. Type 'SL' then 'E' to show the logs. View these logs and these may indicate what the problem is likely to be.
To remove the attention light, scroll through all messages. The attention light should disappear.

HTH
Michael

[William Shaw]

Thanks for the reply Michael. After swapping in a different pair of 6795's, the system boots up fine. I then swapped the original HBA's back, and the system boots fine. I think one of the cards may not have been securely installed in the PCI slot.

I still have a problem with one of the 2 HBA's, but I will save that issue for a new thread. For now the questions at hand have been answered.

Thanks, --Bill

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Red fault led usually means that SPU (server) can not boot - path to bootable media is invalid, boot device is failed, or there's no bootable area (code) on the boot device
Eugeny