Sun Fire B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes
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| Sun Fire B1600 Chassis and B100s, B100x, and B200x Blade Product Notes
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| C H A P T E R 3 |
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Solaris x86 |
This chapter contains the following sections:
Before you start to install Solaris x86 onto a B100x or B200x Blade, please perform the steps in this section.
For the first full release of the Solaris x86 software to support B100x or B200x blades, the documentation and some mandatory patches required for Solaris 9 (12/03) are available on the web.
To download the documentation and patches you need, do the following:
1. Go to the website http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/b100x/ or http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/b200x/
2. In the lefthand column click on the link called "Downloads".
3. In the Downloads section, click "Solaris x86 SW Drivers".
(If you have not used the Download Service before, you will be invited to register before proceeding.)
4. Log into the download service.
5. Click "Download B100x Solaris x86 Driver Software" and save the packages to the directory /var/tmp/blades. (The download for the B100x blade is also the download for the B200x blade. They both require the same software.)
The file you will download is called mis.259-4174-11.zip (The last two digits in this filename indicate the version number. The number is correct at the time of writing, but may have subsequently been incremented).
6. Return to the web page http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/b100x or http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/b200x/
7. Click on the link called "Documentation".
8. Download and print out the chapters of the following documents concerning Solaris x86 installation:
9. Proceed to Section 3.1.2, Overview of the Solaris x86 Installation Process.
1. Set up a network install image for Solaris x86 using the Solaris 9 (12/03) Media Kit.
For instructions, refer to the Solaris 9 Installation Guide supplied with the Media Kit.
2. Apply the mandatory patches to the Solaris x86 network install image you have created.
For instructions, see Section 3.2, Applying Mandatory Software Patches to the Solaris x86 Install Image of these Product Notes.
3. Configure the Network Install Server and the DHCP Server to perform the PXE boot installation for your blade or blades.
For instructions, refer to the Sun Fire B100x and B200x Server Blade Installation and Setup Guide).
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Note - The earliest version of the Solaris x86 Operating System supported on the B100x or B200x server blade is Solaris 9 (12/03). |
Before following the instructions in the Sun Fire B100x and B200x Server Blade Installation and Setup Guide for installing Solaris 9 x86 onto a blade, you must follow the instructions in this section of the Product Notes.
This is because the instructions in the blade installation and setup guide assume that you have a later version of Solaris 9 than is currently available. Until the later version becomes available, you need to apply mandatory patches to the Solaris 9 (12/03) install image for the B100x and B200x server blade. This section of the Product Notes tells you how to apply these patches.
Further information about installing the Solaris 9 x86 operating system is available in the Solaris 9 Installation Guide supplied with the Solaris 9 media kit. The document can also be downloaded from http://docs.sun.com.
1. On the Solaris system you are going to use as the Network Install Server, make a directory called /var/tmp/blades by typing:
2. Download the software if you have not done so already (by following the instructions in Section 3.1.1, Solaris x86 Drivers and Documentation).
3. Save the download file to the directory /var/tmp/blades.
The download file is called mis.259-4174-11.zip. The filename included here is the correct version number at the time of writing. Because this file is likely to be updated, the final two digits in the name of the file you download may be higher than -11. If so, this indicates that you are downloading a more recent version of the software updates for the B100x and B200x server blades.)
The download file contains the following B100x- and B200x-specific software:
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Note - This download contains all the mandatory patches required for running Solaris 9 (12/03) on the B100x and B200x server blades. |
4. At the Solaris prompt on the system you are going to use as the Network Install Server, unzip the files you have downloaded.
5. Proceed to Creating a Network Install Server.
To install the Solaris x86 software over the network onto a blade, you must create an install server. This section describes how to set up an install server on the same subnet as the server blade you are about to install, by copying the Solaris x86 CD or DVD images to the hard disk drive on the system that is to perform the role of Network Install Server.
The following procedure refers to Chapter 12 ("Preparing to Install Solaris Software Over the Network") on page 209 of the Solaris 9 Installation Guide. This document is supplied with the Solaris 9 media kit. The beginning of the chapter provides background information.
1. On the system that is going to be the Solaris x86 Network Install Server, log in and become superuser.
This system must include a CD-ROM or DVD drive and be part of the site's network and name service.
2. Follow the instructions in the Solaris 9 Installation Guide to set up a Network Install image for Solaris 9 (12/03).
These will include the instruction to copy the Solaris 9 image (from its location on a CD or DVD, or from a location on the network) to the install server's hard disk by using the setup_install_server command.
The setup_install_server command indicates whether or not there is enough disk space available for the Solaris 9 software media images. To determine available disk space, use the df -kl command.
To run the setup_install_server command, type:
where install_dir_path specifies the directory that the CD image is to be copied to. The directory must be empty.
3. Change to the directory in which you placed mis.259-4174-11.zip by typing:
4. Add the patches and packages automatically to the network install server image by typing:
where install_dir_path is the path to the install image on your install server.
5. You can now proceed to Chapter 10 of the Sun Fire B100x and B200x Server Blade Installation and Setup Guide to perform the operating system setup steps for your blades.
The known problems listed in this section have been observed to affect both B100x and B200x server blades. They are presented in three groups:
Solaris x86 does not currently support power button events generated through ACPI. This means that a poweroff command issued on the system controller
(sc> poweroff sn) will not cause an orderly shutdown of the blade's operating system before powering off the blade.
To avoid causing possible corruption to the root disk partition by powering off the disk before the operating system has been shutdown in an orderly fashion, first issue a Solaris command to perform an orderly shutdown (for information about different ways to achieve this, refer to the man pages for the shutdown, halt, and init commands). For example:
The blade can then be safely powered off from the system controller by means of the sc> poweroff command. For example:
where the `2' indicates the blade in slot 2 of the chassis.
B100x and B200x blades contain CPU processors that go into a power throttling state when only one power supply unit (PSU) is present in the B1600 chassis. During the early stages of the Solaris boot process a number of software timing loops are calibrated. These are affected when the CPU power throttling state changes: they are not currently re-calibrated upon a change of the power throttling state. This means that, if the power throttling state were to change while the blade was running Solaris x86, the timing loops would no longer execute correctly, and the operation of all device drivers making use of critical timing functions would be affected.
In normal use the power throttling state will only change during removal or insertion of a second PSU.
If you have removed a second PSU from the B1600 chassis, or if you have inserted a second PSU into the chassis, you can avoid these two issues by rebooting the blades after the PSU insertion or removal.
The value of the hostid for blades that are running Solaris x86 is different from the hostid value programmed into the B1600 chassis for the blade's physical location. When Solaris x86 is installed for the first time onto a blade, the hostid value is generated by the install process. It is generated as a random unique value, once for the life of the blade. Solaris x86 does not currently support changes to this value under software control. The value is maintained for all subsequent installations of Solaris on the same blade by being stored in an inaccessible location on the hard disk.
If you are replacing a blade, or if you are moving a blade from one slot in the chassis to another, note that the blade does not inherit its hostid from its new physical location in the chassis. (Solaris x86 blades differ in this respect from blades running Linux or SPARC Solaris.)
During a Jumpstart installation the disk partitioning can get into a state
where it causes a validation check to give a false positive. This is
indicated by the following WARNING message:
When this happens the system will not reboot at the end of the Jumpstart installation. However, the error message can be safely ignored and the system simply rebooted.
You can workaround this problem by including the reboot command at the end of the Jumpstart x86-finish script. For more information, refer to the chapter entitled "Installing Solaris x86" in the Sun Fire B100x and B200x Server Blade Installation and Setup Guide.
During an interactive Solaris installation the install program will prompt you to select the partition layout of the disk. If you choose to layout the disk with a single disk partition that combines x86boot and Solaris partitions, then when the blade is rebooted the 'Device Configuration Assistant' screen will be displayed and you will be prompted to select the boot device.
To avoid this, manually select the option to define seperate x86boot and Solaris disk partitions. For instructions about how to do this, refer to the information on disk partitioning in the chapter of the Sun Fire B100x and B200x Server Blade Installation and Setup Guide entitle entitled "Installing Solaris x86".
Solaris X86 supports the break command when the kernel has been booted under control of the kernel debugger (kadb).
Under normal operation the blade will not be booted under kadb control and it may appear that the break command has had no effect. On a SPARC system the break command would cause the operating system to drop to the Open Boot Prom (OBP) ok prompt. However, this facility is not available on Solaris x86 systems because they use BIOS instead of OBP.
Nevertheless, if you issue the break command from the System Controller's sc> prompt, for example:
then the System Controller will still send the break command to the blade even if it is running Solaris x86. Therefore application software that is running on the blade can receive and interpret the command.
If you have IPMP configured on a blade and you reset the chassis's integrated switch, you will see an error message that appears to contradict the IPMP configuration of the blade. The console output during the reset will possibly display several link up messages while the switch is physically in the process of resetting (see below). There will be no corresponding link down messages. This behavior is a result of the way the bge driver negotiates with the switches. It has no negative impact on network connectivity or on the operation of IPMP. When the switch reset completes, the link status will be correct and IPMP will be functioning correctly.
This section lists error messages that will be be observed during a network installation or reboot. In all cases these messages can be safely ignored. They have no impact on B100x and B200x blades.
When the B100x and B200x blades boot you will see the following message:
This message is generated because the blades do not have a frame buffer. It can be safely ignored.
When you configure a SPARC Solaris custom Jumpstart installation, the installation program does not prompt you to choose whether to perform an interactive or a Jumpstart installation. Instead it reports that it is proceeding with a Jumpstart installation.
There are two issues, however, that affect Jumpstart installations of Solaris x86. The installation program does prompt you to choose either an interactive or a Jumpstart installation even if you have previously configured a Jumpstart. It pauses for up to 30 seconds and when this time has elapsed the installation program reports that it is 'starting interactive installation' even if you have configured the blade to perform a Jumpstart installation.
Despite this message, the blade will perform a Jumpstart installation if you have configured it to do so.
You can easily confirm that a Jumpstart is in fact taking place because, early in the booting and installation process, the output will contain references to the Jumpstart configuration files (rules.ok, x86-begin, x86-class, x86-finish).
where the `:' character indicates information that has been removed from the sample output.
On the B100x you will see the following message about /dev/diskette0 during a reboot or PXE boot:
On the B200x you will see the following message about /dev/diskette0 during a reboot or PXE boot:
SunOS Secondary Boot version 3.00 /dev/diskette0: can't open - bios configuration error Solaris Intel Platform Edition Booting System |
On the B200x you might also see the following message during a network installation. This message refers to an attempt by Solaris to interact with a floppy disk controller that is disabled by the BIOS.
During the booting of a B200x blade you might see the following message briefly displayed:
If you see this message in respect of a B200x blade, you can safely ignore it.
The B200x blade has two dual-port BCM5704s Gigabit Ethernet chips. Each individual port is connected to one of the Ethernet switches in the B1600 chassis, and the BIOS takes responsibility for assigning the MAC addresses to the Ethernet ports (see FIGURE 3-1).
