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

[Al Chu]

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
> 
> 
-- 
Albert Chu
address@hidden
Computer Scientist
High Performance Systems Division
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory