AIX

Does anybody know how to reset the NVRAM on a System p 520 (power 5)?

What do you mean by the NVRAM? That's more of a Sparc/Solaris term to me.

There are several things that you could be asking here, so could you clarify? Are you looking to:-....... and potentially others.

Are you partitioned with an HMC or IVM/VIO?



Some help on what you are trying to achieve might get you the help you need.



Robin

This is not an LPAR, it's a standalone system.

To answer your question, I migrated this sytem from 5.3 to 6.1 without first upgrading the firmware. Now the system doesn't boot. Can't even access maintenance mode.

There is an IBM link that addresses this problem and suggests to drain the NVRAM battery, see below:

"If you have older microcode, the system can fail to boot from the media, or could hang on reboot after the migration. If your firmware level does not support the level of AIX, you could find that attempting to boot from the CD could corrupt your nvram, which could prevent the system from booting until the nvram battery has been drained."

So now I am trying to figure out how to drain the nvram battery

You could refer this straight to IBM and get specialist advice, but if you are not contracted another option would be to download the microcode.

Go to IBM Support: Fix Central and get the ISO file. Expand it and write the contents to CD and update you p520 with that.

If you are HMC managed, the CD goes in the HMC and you use the Updates section in the main left hand side menu. If you are serial console, then apply power to the chassis, but do not press the power button. Make sure that the server completes the SSP power-on (5 minutes or so) and then press ENTER on the console. You will need top sign in to the SSP, but then there are menus to lead you through applying firmware. It's a bit difficult to say how without a machine to practice on, but it should be fairly obvious.

I hope that this helps, but do let us know.



Robin
Liverpool/Blackburn
UK

it's not managed by HMC...

I downloaded the FW from FixCentral... i'll try to install the FW from CD

i'll update

If you get stuck, let us know. You need to have the correct cable to connect a terminal or laptop to the serial port. It has to be wired correctly, not just "it fits the hole" so if you are stuck, I should be able to find that.

You also need to get the communication setting correct. 19200 BAUD is more common in Power5 servers now.



Robin

this is standalone server, no HMC.

I managed to boot from the diagnostics CD, there is an option to update the firmware, then you have to insert the CD containing the firmware image you want to install.

I downloaded the latest firmware image from FixCentral called 01SF240_418_382.iso
Burned it to a CD but after inserting the CD to the server it didn't recognize the image
Then I saw that the contents of the CD was one rpm image 01SF240_418_382.rpm
Then I read in the documentation that the server will only recognize a .img image
So I extracted the contents of the rpm but there was only a file called 01SF240_418_382 (without .img extension)

So this is what i've tried:

- a CD containing a file called: 01SF240_418_382.rpm
- a CD containing a file called: 01SF240_418_382

Didn't work...

So I renamed the file to 01SF240_418_382.img and burned into a CD

Didn't work...

I am so frustrated... I need to have this ready for tomorrow

Btw, I also downloaded and burned the System Microcode Update Files and Discovery Tool CD-ROM image (IBM - Microcode update files on CD-ROM) which is supposed to contain all the firmware images for all the platforms.

This time it DID read the CD.. next, I had to choose which .img to install, there was a list of about 40 .img files, but guess what... SF240_418_382.img was not one of them

if I had hair.. i would be pulling it right now

please help?