Network connectivity checks For the server without OS  ( just Racked hardware and powered up)

For X86 Hardware

We have to make LED checks – like when we disconnect the cable at the server side / switch side the Link / Act LEDs should lit up on powered on machines.

For Sparc based Servers:

We can watch individual interfaces to see if they have a connection and can ‘see’ the network. At the OBP prompt on the client, use the “watch-net-all” command to test and see the network devices.

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Access Server’s OS Console from the LOM service Processor:

Server Models : SunFire V100/V120/V1280/E2900 and Netra 1280/1290

You can use below command to navigate between Server OS console and LOM port:

connecting to console from LOM prompt:

sc/lom>console

Returning to LOM from the Server console

presss #. ( # followed by a dot)

How to send break signal to console so that we can launch the server at OK> Prompt:

sc/lom>break – server will be landed into ok prompt

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This post is to highlight some of the steps needed to diagnose if an issue is in fact a disk performance issue or not.  And if it is, what data will be collected to help diagnose the issue. Please note that performance in general is not an easy issue to tackle.  This is because it can be caused by many issues that may not be disk related. Full Story

One of the Sample Issue: Customer frequently sees in /var/adm/messages

syslogd: going down on signal 15

which indicates that the system rebooted from a normal shutdown or
init 6, yet no reboot has actually occurred and uptime indicates
that no reboot occurred.

If you stop the syslogd and restart it, it puts a message in /var/adm/messages file with a timestamp.  If you compare the timestamp of this message in
/var/adm/messages and the output of who -b, you will see that they don’t match. This means that the system was actually not rebooted, only syslogd was stopped
and restarted.

Apr 25 16:25:55 bubbles syslogd: going down on signal 15

# who -b
.       system boot  Apr 25 14:03

By the way, going down on signal 15 means that the kernel issued a SIGTERM to every process before shutdown. All signals are defined in /usr/include/sys/signal.h Full Story

The hardware set up is very basic. A standard network cable with RJ45 connectors needs to be plugged into the port on the I/O panel labeled “NET MGT” with the other end connected to the network.

Note: This interface is 10HDX so please ensure that the network hardware can negotiate to that speed or be forced to 10hdx. Some older hubs/switches are 100MB only, and are unable to establish link with the ALOM ethernet port.
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This problem is not common to all the versions and releases but specific to the released of Solaris 8 and 9 ( I am not able to get those number clearly to mention here)

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