Re: [Freeipmi-users] Re: FreeIPMI SDR caching problem.

[Peter Bisroev]

Hey Al,

Thank you for a quick response and a patch. As soon as the beta is up I'll
test it out and let you know.

Thanks!

-- peter

On Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:21:11 -0800, Al Chu <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hey Peter,
> 
> I think I figured it out, I introduced a sequence number wrap around bug
> in 0.8.1 when I was "cleaning up" some code.  Most motherboards don't
> have anywhere near the number of sensors that the Dell ones do, so they
> never reach that point.  I'll put up a beta tar.gz tomorrow.
> 
> Al
> 
> On Thu, 2010-02-11 at 16:44 -0800, Al Chu wrote:
>> Hi Peter,
>> 
>> > First of all let me thank you for the great work that you and other
>> > developers are doing, this is truly a very helpful tool.
>> 
>> You're definitely welcome.
>> 
>> > I was thinking of submitting this problem through the GNU FreeIPMI 
>> > project bugs page but did not see any activity there so decided to 
>> > mail you directly. I hope that that is OK.
>> 
>> No problem, but in the future it's best to e-mail the
>> address@hidden list (I'm CCing it now).
>> 
>> > Now to the problem. When running ipmi-* tools that can generate SDR
>> > cache
>> > such as ipmimonitoring and ipmi-sensors with driver type (-D LAN_2_0),
>> > the
>> > SDR cache generation freezes after some record and then gives the
>> > following
>> > error, 'ipmi_sdr_cache_create: internal IPMI error'.
>> 
>> That's definitely not good.
>> 
>> > After the error I can rerun the command with driver type LAN, and
>> > everything succeeds. From that point on I can use driver type LAN_2_0
>> > again
>> > and everything will work fine. So it looks like that only SDR cache
>> > generation does not seem to work with LAN_2_0 driver. Just for testing
>> > I
>> > ran a similar command to read the SDR data using ipmitool and using
>> > ipmitool's equivalent of LAN_2_0 and everything seemed to work fine.
>> > 
>> > I have observed this behavior on Dell PowerEdge R300, R610 and R710.
>> > And at
>> > every run the error will be generated after the same SDR record for
>> > each
>> > platform. Below are the errors for each one of those server types:
>> 
>> Luckily, I have a PowerEdge R610 and I've reproduced the bug.  I need to
>> figure this out, it's definitely odd.  It does appear to be specific to
>> the Dell motherboards.  I'm not sure what the issue is.
>> 
>> Thanks for bringing it to my attention.  I'll look into it and get back
>> to you.
>> 
>> Al
>> 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > R300 (DRAC5):
>> > 
>> > --------------------------------
>> > 
>> > Caching SDR record 61 of 80 (current record ID 61)
>> > 
>> > ipmi_sdr_cache_create: internal IPMI error
>> > 
>> > --------------------------------
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > R610 (iDRAC):
>> > 
>> > --------------------------------
>> > 
>> > Caching SDR record 58 of 124 (current record ID 58)
>> > 
>> > ipmi_sdr_cache_create: internal IPMI error
>> > 
>> > --------------------------------
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > R710 (iDRAC):
>> > 
>> > --------------------------------
>> > 
>> > Caching SDR record 59 of 115 (current record ID 59)
>> > 
>> > ipmi_sdr_cache_create: internal IPMI error
>> > 
>> > --------------------------------
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > If you have a time and opportunity to look at this problem is there
>> > 
>> > anything I can provide you with that will make this task easier?
>> 
>> On Thu, 2010-02-11 at 15:47 -0800, Peter Bisroev wrote:
>> > Hello Albert,
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > My name is Peter Bisroev and I am using the FreeIPMI package to
monitor
>> > a
>> > 
>> > number of DELL servers from a scripted environment.
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > First of all let me thank you for the great work that you and other
>> > 
>> > developers are doing, this is truly a very helpful tool. I was
thinking
>> > of
>> > 
>> > submitting this problem through the GNU FreeIPMI project bugs page but
>> > did
>> > 
>> > not see any activity there so decided to mail you directly. I hope
that
>> > 
>> > that is OK.
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > Now to the problem. When running ipmi-* tools that can generate SDR
>> > cache
>> > 
>> > such as ipmimonitoring and ipmi-sensors with driver type (-D LAN_2_0),
>> > the
>> > 
>> > SDR cache generation freezes after some record and then gives the
>> > following
>> > 
>> > error, 'ipmi_sdr_cache_create: internal IPMI error'.
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > After the error I can rerun the command with driver type LAN, and
>> > 
>> > everything succeeds. From that point on I can use driver type LAN_2_0
>> > again
>> > 
>> > and everything will work fine. So it looks like that only SDR cache
>> > 
>> > generation does not seem to work with LAN_2_0 driver. Just for testing
>> > I
>> > 
>> > ran a similar command to read the SDR data using ipmitool and using
>> > 
>> > ipmitool's equivalent of LAN_2_0 and everything seemed to work fine.
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > I have observed this behavior on Dell PowerEdge R300, R610 and R710.
>> > And at
>> > 
>> > every run the error will be generated after the same SDR record for
>> > each
>> > 
>> > platform. Below are the errors for each one of those server types:
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > R300 (DRAC5):
>> > 
>> > --------------------------------
>> > 
>> > Caching SDR record 61 of 80 (current record ID 61)
>> > 
>> > ipmi_sdr_cache_create: internal IPMI error
>> > 
>> > --------------------------------
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > R610 (iDRAC):
>> > 
>> > --------------------------------
>> > 
>> > Caching SDR record 58 of 124 (current record ID 58)
>> > 
>> > ipmi_sdr_cache_create: internal IPMI error
>> > 
>> > --------------------------------
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > R710 (iDRAC):
>> > 
>> > --------------------------------
>> > 
>> > Caching SDR record 59 of 115 (current record ID 59)
>> > 
>> > ipmi_sdr_cache_create: internal IPMI error
>> > 
>> > --------------------------------
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > If you have a time and opportunity to look at this problem is there
>> > 
>> > anything I can provide you with that will make this task easier?
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > PS: I would be more than happy to submit a patch for the problem but
my
>> > 
>> > knowledge of IPMI protocol is almost non existent so that is not an
>> > option
>> > 
>> > for the meantime.
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > Thanks you.
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > Best Regards,
>> > 
>> > Peter
>> > 
>> >