[Freeipmi-devel] watchdog problems on Sun X4100M2

[Frank Steiner]

Hi,

I'm successfully running the bmc-watchdog on our Sun x2200M2 machines.
But on the X4100M2 I see a strange problem: The timer starts counting, but
claims to be stopped:


sunserver2 /root# bmc-watchdog -g
Timer Use:                   SMS/OS
Timer:                       Stopped
Logging:                     Enabled
Timeout Action:              Power Cycle
Pre-Timeout Interrupt:       None
Pre-Timeout Interval:        0 seconds
Timer Use BIOS FRB2 Flag:    Set
Timer Use BIOS POST Flag:    Set
Timer Use BIOS OS Load Flag: Set
Timer Use BIOS SMS/OS Flag:  Set
Timer Use BIOS OEM Flag:     Set
Initial Countdown:           900 seconds
Current Countdown:           900 seconds


sunserver2 /root# /usr/sbin/bmc-watchdog -d -u 4 -p 0 -a 3 -F -P -L -S -O -i 
900 -e 540
sunserver2 /root# bmc-watchdog -g
Timer Use:                   SMS/OS
Timer:                       Stopped
Logging:                     Enabled
Timeout Action:              Power Cycle
Pre-Timeout Interrupt:       None
Pre-Timeout Interval:        0 seconds
Timer Use BIOS FRB2 Flag:    Set
Timer Use BIOS POST Flag:    Set
Timer Use BIOS OS Load Flag: Set
Timer Use BIOS SMS/OS Flag:  Set
Timer Use BIOS OEM Flag:     Set
Initial Countdown:           900 seconds
Current Countdown:           896 seconds

And it continues to countdown.

The problem is that I cannot use the watchdog as daemon because according
to strace it exits when it sees the timer field is still "stopped".

Is anything known about this? I didn't find a hint in the workarounds.
The watchdog daemon is disabled in the bios to avoid it resetting when
e.g. a file system check takes some time. But so it is on the x2200M2,
and those correctly set the field to "Running" after the above call.

The ILOM on the 4100M2 is up-to-date (just flashed today).

cu,
Frank

-- 
Dipl.-Inform. Frank Steiner   Web:  http://www.bio.ifi.lmu.de/~steiner/
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