Chapter 4
LP6000 FC Host Adapter

This information documents the September 2000 release of vendor-supplied FF firmware from Emulex:

The "FF" family of vendor-supplied FC Host Adapter firmware supports the LP6000 (IOC-0210-52) model of the FC Host Adapter (also known as the V3 board type) from Emulex.

This document supports the newest release that is qualified for use with the DYNIX/ptx V4.6.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 information contains the following sections:


4.1 FF2.30 Compatibility Information

Version FF2.30 of the FC Host Adapter firmware is compatible with:


4.2 FF2.30 Changes Since the Previous Release

Version FF2.30 was released to resolve Redlight 465, which affects versions FF2.22 and FF2.23. These versions of firmware falsely entered a condition that caused the system to panic. FF2.30 corrects the false set of events.

FF2.30 has improved error handling when unrecoverable internal errors are encountered on FC Host Adapters. Additionally, the ff driver in DYNIX/ptx V4.6.x was enhanced to report unrecoverable internal errors and gracefully halt the FC Host Adapter.

With FF2.30 and DYNIX/ptx V4.6.x, 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 that the OS immediately halts processing I/O through 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. 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.



4.3 FF2.30 Firmware Open Problem Reports

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.


4.4 Install and Download FF2.30

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. (DYNIX/ptx V4.4.x used ffutil to download FC Host Adapter firmware.) For details on the other software installed by this bundle, refer to the cfwdl-Compatible Firmware Bundle V1.1.x Release Notes.

The name of the firmware file for the LP6000 FC Host Adapter 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 "Download Firmware with cfwdl" chapter of the DYNIX/ptx V4.6.1 and Layered Products Software Installation Release Notes.