The "FF" family of vendor-supplied FC Host Adapter firmware supports the IOC-0210-52 model of the FC Host Adapter LP6000 (also known as the V3 board type) from Emulex.
This document supports the newest release and the previous release that are qualified for use with the DYNIX/ptx V4.5.x operating systems.
See Table 1-1 for the latest recipe for the best set of FC firmware to run on a given operating system.
This section contains the following:
Version FF2.30 of the FC Host Adapter firmware is compatible with:
The LP6000 FC Host Adapter Model IOC-0210-52 only (also known as the V3 board type)
Other members of its software release-sets as listed in Table 1-1
Switched and two-node arbitrated-loop fabric topologies
Multimode, non-OFC, fiber-optic FC components
CLARiiON® DAE and DPE Storage Subsystems
EMC Symmetrix Storage Subsystems running at least V5265.44.28 firmware.
Version FF2.30 was released to resolve Redlight 465, which affects versions FF2.22 and FF2.23. Those versions of firmware falsely entered a condition that caused the system to panic. FF2.30 corrects the false set of events. Additionally, the ff driver in DYNIX/ptx V4.5.x was enhanced to report unrecoverable internal errors and gracefully halt the FC Host Adapter.
ATTENTION When using version FF2.30, be sure to install the applicable DYNIX/ptx patch from the "Software Patches for DYNIX/ptx ..." CD. Without this patch, the ff driver does not report internal error status returned from FC Host Adapters. (This was a problem reported by mailbug 253022.)
With FF2.30 and the latest DYNIX/ptx V4.5.x patch, the ff driver logs the following messages to /usr/adm/ktlog and to the EES log when an unrecoverable internal error is encountered:
warning:ff4: Adapter reported unrecoverable internal error,
error status: Internal :
warning:Adapter ff4 stopped responding. Disabling the adapter.
Deconfigure and reconfigure the adapter to restore :
The first message indicates that the FC Host Adapter has recognized a fatal hardware error. This error is severe enough to immediately halt processing I/O by that particular PCI/FC Host Adapter, as indicated by the second message. This prevents data corruption. The ff driver then recovers all pending I/O operations on the FC Host Adapter and re-routes the pending I/O operations to other FC Host Adapters that have data paths to the same device (disk or tape).
If there are no other paths to the same device, then those pending I/O operations will not complete. Hard errors are recorded in /usr/adm/ktlog and the EES log. You should replace the FC Host Adapter and tag it with these messages. Note that with FF2.30 and the latest DYNIX/ptx V4.5.x patch, all other running applications and the operating system itself will continue to operate when this condition occurs.
ATTENTION Use the devctl -d command to deconfigure a disabled FC Host Adapter as soon as reasonable. Otherwise, future OLI operations involving a fabric that contains a disabled FC Host Adapter will fail. The failure occurs because a disabled FC Host Adapter cannot acknowledge a new device on the fabric, which in turn prevents that new device from being configured in the device naming database.
There are no outstanding Critical or Serious problems reported against the FF2.30 firmware specifically. See "FC I/O Subsystem-Level Problem Reports," Chapter 2 for possible I/O subsystem-level problems involving FC Host Adapters.
The FF2.30 software is installed on the system when the cfwdl-Compatible Firmware Bundle is installed on your host. The cfwdl-Compatible Firmware Bundle contains firmware that is downloaded only with the common firmware downloader, cfwdl. For details on the other software installed by this bundle, refer to the cfwdl-Compatible Firmware Bundle V1.2.0 Release Notes.
The name of the firmware file for LP6000 FC Host Adapters running on DYNIX/ptx V4.5.1 or V4.5.2 is:
/usr/ssw/fw/fc_ff_230.sqfw
Procedures for using the cfwdl utility to download firmware in any or all FC Host Adapters are provided in the "Downloading Firmware with cfwdl," chapter of the DYNIX/ptx V4.5.2 and Layered Products Software Installation Release Notes.