DIAGNOSTIC.readme file (Dec 03)

Overview

Required and Recommended Patches

Loading Patches

Known Problems

Removing Diagnostics

Getting More Information

EMS Hardware Monitors

This DIAGNOSTICS.readme document covers the December 2003 release of Support Plus for S800/S700 systems (HP-UX 11i).

NOTE: As of the September 1999 release, the name of the Diagnostic/IPR Media has been changed to Support Plus. In addition, the format has changed so that there is a separate CD-ROM for each version of the operating system: HP-UX 11i (11.11) and HP-UX 11.00.

CAUTION You must install certain patches before loading Online Diagnostics (Support Tools). See "Required and Recommended Patches" below. :

Overview

Support Plus contains a complete build of the following support tools:

Support Tool Manager (STM) for online diagnostics

ODE (offline diagnostics) / LIFLOAD

EMS hardware monitors (HP-UX 11i)

EMS Kernel resource monitors (HP-UX 11.x only)

Predictive Support (HP-UX 11.00/S800 only)

(Support Plus no longer contains File System Recovery. The 11.X releases have File System Recovery on the Core/Install Media. This is included in your HP-UX media kits.)

The support tools are all contained in a Software Depot (SD) bundle named "OnlineDiag". This bundle is distributed in two ways:

Support Plus media

HP Software Depot website

This is the generic command line for listing various content levels of the depot:
swlist -l <level> -s /<mount_point>/DIAGNOSTICS/<os_release>

where <level> 
         = bundle       Bundle level listing
         = product      Product level listing
         = subproduct   Sub-product level listing
         = fileset      File set listing

      <mount_point>     Location where the CD file system
                        is mounted.

      <os_release>      The OS contents of the depot.
         = B.11.00
         = B.11.11
The following is a live examples for the IPR0109 11.00 Support+ CD media:
For the 11.00 media...
> swlist -l bundle  -s /cdr/DIAGNOSTICS/B.11.00

# Initializing...
# Contacting target "hpdst4"...
#
# Target:  hpdst4:/cdr/DIAGNOSTICS/B.11.00
#
  B9073AA       B.04.00        HP-UX iCOD-purchase (Instant Capacity on
Demand  
  OnlineDiag    B.11.00.18.09  HPUX 11.0 Support Tools Bundle, Sep 2001 
  T1322AA       B.04.00        HP-UX iCOD-utility (Instant Capacity on
Demand - 

swlist -l product -s /cdr/DIAGNOSTICS/B.11.00

# Initializing...
# Contacting target "hpdst4"...
#
# Target:  hpdst4:/cdr/DIAGNOSTICS/B.11.00
#
  Contrib-Tools         B.11.00.18.09  Contributed Tools 
  EMS-Config            A.03.20        EMS Config     
  EMS-Core              A.03.20        EMS Core Product 
  EMS-KRMonitor         A.11.00.04     EMS Kernel Resource Monitor 
  LIF-LOAD              B.11.00.18.09  HP LIF LOAD Tools 
  Predictive            C.11.00.18.07  HP Predictive Support 
  Sup-Tool-Mgr          B.11.00.18.09  Support Tools Manager for HPUX
systems 
  iCOD-purchase         B.04.00        Instant Capacity On Demand -
purchase 
  iCOD-utility          B.04.00        Instant Capacity On Demand -
utility 
The Support Tools Manager, ODE/LIFLOAD, and (optionally) Predictive Support must be loaded after the Operating System is installed. The EMS Hardware Monitors are installed automatically when STM is installed.

Support Plus can be:

Mounted and used to install online diagnostics and support tools via swinstall(1m).

Booted to ISL and used to load and run offline diagnostics.

For this December 2003 release:

All diagnostic defect repairs and enhancements as of December 1, 2003, are included. Any future patches dated after December must be loaded after Support Plus is loaded.

Support for the new hardware in all active releases as of December 1, 2003.

NOTE: SCAN software not in Support Plus (Sept 2001)
As of the September 2001 release, the SCAN software for Superdome is no longer delivered on the HP-UX 11i version of the Support Plus CD-ROM. Instead, the SCAN software will be available on the SMS Media. The FWUU bundle which was previously included in the SCAN software will still be delivered on Support Plus, but it will be in the OnlineDiag depot B.11.11.

Required and Recommended Patches

CAUTION: You must install certain patches before loading Online Diagnostics (Support Tools).

This document lists the required and recommended patches at the time of writing.

Loading Patches

You can load the patches in one of three different ways:

Method 1: Entire patch bundle. Install the entire HW or HWCR patch bundle for your system. Advantages: simple and tested process. Disadvantages: the bundle can be many megabytes in size.

Choose the Hardware Critical (HWCR) or Hardware (HW) patch bundle appropriate for your system. For example, choose XSWHWCR1100 for a Series 800 system running HP-UX 11.00.

The patch bundles are distributed in the same way as the OnlineDiag bundle:

The Support Plus media

The HP Software Depot website

The procedure for using swinstall to load the patches is described in Chapter 5 of the "Support Plus: Diagnostics Users Manual."
Method 2: Individual patches from bundle. Install ONLY the individual patches required for your system from the HW or HWCR patch bundle described above. Advantages: Small number of patches. Disadvantages: Requires knowledge of SD (swinstall) to select patches (interactive selection or command line selection).

Method 3: Individual patches from website. You can also obtain the patches through the HP IT Resource Center (http://us.itrc.hp.com). A problem with loading individual patches from this website is that a system reboot is required for every patch that requires a reboot (patches to the kernel, indicated by "PHKL" in the patch name, all require a reboot).

Known Problems

CAUTION: Info Tool Causes HPMCs on K- and T-Class (HP-UX 11i only)
K-Class and T-Class computers running HP-UX 11i will experience HPMCs or Data Page Faults if you run the STM Info Tool to retrieve configuration information from HP-PB SE SCSI adapters (JAGad88317, JAGad97126).

The root cause is a problem in the HP-UX 11i kernel, which is exposed when the Info Tool is run as described above. To correct the problem and avoid potential HPMCs, load patch PHKL_25552 or its successor. This is a kernel patch and requires a system reboot.

STM only exposes this problem if the Info Tool is run on HP-PB SE SCSI adapters. STM does not expose the problem if the Info Tool is run against other I/O devices.

CAUTION: UPS Monitor May Need a Patch
In some cases, the UPS monitor (dm_ups) will not function and will instead generate event 45 (formerly event 42) with the text:
Probable Cause / Recommended Action:

The monitor was unable to locate the fifo pipe that should have been
created by ups_mond.  Therefore, information about the ups cannot be sent
to the monitor.

You need version (80.1.2.3) of ups_mond or greater.  To update your
system with the correct version of ups_mond, install one of the
following patches:

HPUX 11.00      : PHCO_24172 (supercedes PHCO_23831)
HPUX 11.11      : PHCO_27828 (supercedes PHCO_24173, PHCO_23832)
To fix the problem, load the indicated patch or load the HWE patch bundle which contains this patch. For HP-UX 11i, the ups_mond patch PHCO_23832 is also distributed on the Sept 01 OE.
This problem will affect most systems with a UPS when the September 2001 diagnostics are installed. The only systems not affected will be those which are being updated from certain versions of the diagnostics (September 2000 through March 2001) and which do not have patch PHCO_19040 (HP-UX 11.00) installed.

CAUTION: Monitoring Changes for disc30, sdisk and disk array devices
As of IPR 9902 (Feb 99 release), there has been a change to the way that monitoring is done for disc30, sdisk and the HA Disk Array Models 10, 20, and 30FC.

Formerly, the "diaglogd exec" programs (pdisc30_exec and psdisk_exec) handled driver error entries for these devices.

As of IPR 9902, these programs have been deleted and their functionality is now provided by the EMS Hardware Monitors.

If you had customized the configuration files for the dialogd exec programs (disk30_exec.cfg and sdisk_exec.cfg) you may wish to re-configure the EMS Hardware Monitors to achieve the same results.

CAUTION: Compatibility Problem with EMS-Related Products (ServiceGuard, HA Monitors, etc.)
If you install the OnlineDiag bundle (Dec 99 or later) onto a computer running older revisions of EMS-related products, these products may experience compatibility problems Affected products include MC/ServiceGuard, ServiceGuard OPS Edition and High Availability Monitors. The only critical problems occur with the following versions:
MC/ServiceGuard            A.10.10, A.11.01, A.11.03
ServiceGuard OPS Edition   A.11.02, A.11.03
Support Tools and the EMS hardware monitors are not affected. For complete information, see EMS Incompatibility Problem.

Removing Diagnostics

If you wish to remove the STM online diagnostic system after it has already been installed, type:
           swremove OnlineDiag 
NOTE: Executing the "swremove OnlineDiag" command also removes the Predictive Support package.
Getting More Information

You can get more information on Diagnostics (Support Tools) in the following ways:
Once you install a specific stream (e.g., HP-UX 11.00), the Release Notes for that stream are available:
   Support Tools Manager (STM): /usr/sbin/stm/Rel_NOTES.STM 
   EMS hardware monitors:  /usr/sbin/stm/Rel_NOTES.HWE
   Predictive Support:     /opt/pred/bin/Rel_NOTES.PRED 
For the latest information on hardware support tools, such as STM and EMS Hardware Monitors, refer to the "Diagnostics" section of Hewlett-Packard's online documentation Web site at:
     http://docs.hp.com/hpux/diag/
This site provides manuals, tutorials, FAQs, and other reference material. Two complete manuals ("Support Plus: Diagnostics User's Guide" and "EMS Hardware Monitors User's Guide") appear on the Web site and in the two following locations:
In the DIAGNOSTICS directory under your mount point for the CD-ROM (e.g., /diagtemp/DIAGNOSTICS ). The files are named DIAG_USR.PDF and EMS_USR.PDF and can be read with the Adobe Acrobat viewer which can be downloaded from the Adobe Web site.
EMS Hardware Monitors
Included on the Support Plus CD-ROM are the EMS Hardware Monitors which are an important tool for maintaining system availability. The EMS monitors allow you to monitor the operation of a wide variety of hardware products and be alerted immediately if any failure or other unusual event occurs. Hardware event monitoring is available to users running HP-UX 11.X (IPR February 1999 and later).

Hardware event monitoring provides a high level of protection against system hardware failure. By using hardware event monitoring, you can virtually eliminate undetected hardware failures that could interrupt system operation or cause data loss.

For complete information on installing and using EMS hardware event monitors, as well as a list of supported hardware, refer to the documents listed in "Getting More Information" earlier in this file.

The EMS Hardware Monitors are installed at the same time as the Support Tools Manager. Once the monitoring software is installed, monitoring is automatically enabled.

By default, messages regarding major warning, serious and critical events that occur on hardware being monitored will be:

Written to /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log

Sent to EMAIL address root

All events will be stored in /var/opt/resmon/log/event.log.
To configure, enable, or disable hardware event monitoring, run the monitoring request manager: /etc/opt/resmon/lbin/monconfig .

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URL: http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/diag/st/str_0312.htm
Last updated: Thurs Oct 23 09:19:36 PDT 2003