SOFTPAQ NUMBER: SP30317 PART NUMBER: 394094-003 FILE NAME: SP30317.EXE TITLE: Systems ROMPaq Firmware Upgrade Diskette for HP ProLiant BL35p Servers. VERSION: 4.01B LANGUAGE: English CATEGORY: ROMPaqs DIVISIONS: Systems PRODUCTS AFFECTED: HP ProLiant BL35p OPERATING SYSTEM: ALL SYSTEM CONFIGURATION: N/A PREREQUISITE: N/A EFFECTIVE DATE: May 13, 2005 ELECTRONIC DISTRIBUTION ALLOWED: Yes SOFTPAQ UTILITY VERSION: 2.X SUPERSEDES: SP30195 DESCRIPTION: This release provides updated system ROM images for the latest maintenance releases of HP BL35p Servers. New Features - ProLiant BL35p ROM A03 (04/22/2005) ============================================ None. Problems Fixed - ProLiant BL35p ROM A03 (04/22/2005) ============================================ IMPORTANT: HP recommends that users do not continue to upgrade to the 04/22/2005 version of the System ROM. HP recommends users update to the 04/30/2005 System ROM. The 04/22/2005 System ROM worked-around a potential PCI configuration cycle data corruption issue with the Virtual Serial Port feature by removing support for using the Virtual Serial Port at standard COM port addresses. The 04/30/2005 System ROM fixes the original PCI configuration cycle data corruption issue while allowing use of HP's enhanced Virtual Serial Port feature at standard COM port addresses. During HP's rigorous quality control testing of the ProLiant BL25p, ProLiant BL35p, ProLiant DL385, and ProLiant DL585, a potential issue was discovered. This issue is related to a possible corruption of PCI Configuration Cycles when using HP's Virtual Serial Port feature. This issue has never been duplicated in a customer environment or a testing environment. However, HP identified this possible issue while doing detailed analysis of analyzer traces of these systems. Corruption of PCI Configuration Cycles could result in incorrect system operation such as a kernel panic, blue screen, or exception. While no customer issues have been identified due to this potential issue, HP is committed to ensuring its products provide customers with the highest reliability and has provided an immediate resolution for this issue. HP requires that customers transition to this new System ROM to eliminate the possibility of corruption of PCI Configuration Cycles. While this issue does not affect platforms with Virtual Serial Port disabled, HP still recommends all customers transition to the new System ROM. This ROM makes a modification to the Virtual Serial Port feature that allows redirection of serial console through HP's iLO management processor. The previous System ROM supported an enhancement of the Virtual Serial Port feature which allowed redirection of serial console at standard COM port addresses. This version of the System ROM removes this Virtual Serial Port enhancement to prevent the potential of corrupting PCI Configuration Cycles. This ROM still supports Virtual Serial Port, but not at standard COM port addresses. The Virtual Serial Port will now work as it did on previous generations of HP ProLiant servers. HP is currently in the process of qualifying a fix for the enhanced Virtual Serial Port feature in these platforms that will be released in a future System ROM upgrade. For Windows users, the operating system will automatically detect the new non-standard COM port addresses for serial communication using Windows Emergency Services. Linux users will be required to configure the operating system's serial port redirection to use the new non-standard addresses for serial communication. In addition, BIOS Serial Console cannot be redirected through the Virtual Serial Port with this System ROM. After upgrading the platform with this System ROM, the Virtual Serial Port configuration will automatically be transitioned from the enhanced version of Virtual Serial Port to the standard version of Virtual Serial Port if the system was previously configured to enable Virtual Serial Port. The following is the method of configuring the standard version of Virtual Serial Port: 1. Configure the EMS selection for Remote using RBSU (this will automatically occur when updating the ROM if EMS was previously configured to use the Virtual Serial Port prior to the upgrade of the System ROM). The following steps are required only for Linux users. Setting EMS to Remote is all that is required for Windows users to redirect Emergency Management Services to iLO. 2. The I/O address and/or interrupt must be configured using the setserial command from Linux. Refer to your documentation for the setserial command. Example: setserial /dev/ttyS0/ uart 16550A port 0x4908 irq 4 (Port 0x4908 is the address utilized for Virtual Serial Port for the addressed HP ProLiant Systems.) Note: If you receive the error "cannot set serial info : device or resource busy", comment out the line in /etc/inittabl that sets the VSP tty (it begins with S0 or S1) and run the telinit q command. Edit the /etc/inittab file again and uncomment the previous changes. Then rerun the setserial command again. 3. In order to start a shell session on the configured UART, the appropriate Linux process needs to be started. This process can be started from the shell, but is usually configured in the /etc/rc.local or /etc/rc.d/boot.local file in order to have the process available after the kernel has booted. Refer to your Linux documentation for the appropriate /etc/inittab configuration and documentation for agetty. If sluggish performance is seen with Virtual Serial Port in iLO when configured for IRQ 3 or 4 running Linux operating systems, set the IRQ to 0 using the setserial command as follows: setserial /dev/ttyS0 uart 16550A port 0x4908 irq 0 For more information, see the Virtual Serial Port white paper at http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00263709/c00263709.pdf HOW TO USE: 1. Obtain a formatted 1.44 MB diskette. 2. Download the SoftPaq to a directory on your hard drive and change to that directory. The file that is downloaded is SP30317.EXE. 3. From that drive and directory, execute the SoftPaq file: SP30317 [ENTER] You will be prompted to place the formatted 1.44 MB diskette into a diskette drive to create diskette. 4. After the diskette is created, you may delete the downloaded file SP30317.EXE if you wish. Copyright 2005, Hewlett-Packard Company. All rights reserved. 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