summary: does anyone have experience using sun branded emulex hba cards with linux red hat?

hi,

thanks to Michael Horton for mentioing that red hat and sun have compatibility
charts that show
the LPe11002-s is supported for linux. i hadn't gone to the red hat site, and
couldn't find anything
on sunsolve.sun.com (though i have the worst luck navigating and finding
things there). i spent a bit
of time on the emulex site comparing the firmwares and versions. (strangely it
looks like the emulex
fw is exactly the same as the sun firmware...downloaded both and did a cksum
on the .zip files)
1940091639 300619 emulexzd282a3.zip     lpe11000
1940091639 300619 sunzd282a3.zip        sg-xpcie1fc-em4
3146752049 301313 emulexzf282a3.zip     lpe11002
3146752049 301313 sunzf282a3.zip        sg-xpcie2fc-em4

anyway, the solution to the problem i was experiencing was that a reboot does
not clear/reset the hba's completely.  i thought seeing the bios power on
screen and the memory POST countup meant that this was
a completely fresh start, but apparently, if you're using the hba's under
solaris, you MUST POWEROFF the
server, not reboot it, when doing a linux boot.

here was my experiemnt:
---
TRY: power OFF the server after a solaris session...RESULT: GOOD!!!!
is it really poweroff that's needed? lets confirm...
TRY: reboot to linux RESULT: (expect good) GOOD (that's good)
TRY: reboot to linux RESULT: (expect good) GOOD (that's good)
TRY: reboot to solaris, then reboot to linux do not poweroff RESULT: (expect
bad) GOOD on solaris, BAD on linx (that's good)
TRY: reboot to linux RESULT: (expect bad) BAD (that's good)
TRY: reboot to linux RESULT: (expect bad) BAD (that's good)
TRY: powerdown/powerup boot to linux RESULT: (expect good) GOOD (that's good)
---



original query:

hi sun-managers,

i'm thinking this is a bit of a long shot since it's more of a hybrid question
than a solaris question...but for those of you out there who might have
dabbled in using sun hardware (including sun branded hba's) to install linux
(RHEL) on. does anyone know for sure if the fact that i'm using sun-branded
emulex hbas will give me problems with linux? my setup is this:

solaris:
x4600 M2 with
2x LPe11002-S  Firmware version ZS2.80A4
system      EMLXemlxu                    Emulex LightPulse Fibre Channel
Adapter Utilities (usr)
system      SUNWemlxs                    Emulex-Sun LightPulse Fibre Channel
Adapter (FCA) driver (root)
system      SUNWemlxu                    Emulex-Sun LightPulse Fibre Channel
Adapter Utilties (usr)

linux:
same hardware but i'm not too familiar with how to see what's on the linux
side.
uname -r
2.6.18-128.1.10.el5
i have an hbanywhere dir in /usr/sbin
i see lpfc dir in /proc/irq/##/lprc
any suggestions as to what cmds to run to look at anything?
i get two disturbing errors:
1) "hbacmd showhbas" takes 5.5minutes to return the output (which looks
correct)
2) i get these errors:
     lpfc 0000:84:00.0: 2:0310 Mailbox command x5 timeout Data: x0 x700
xffff81071fd88a00
     lpfc 0000:84:00.0: 2:0345 Resetting board due to mailbox timeout
3) OS doesn't see the luns presented to the hbas (seen on solaris..one is used
and one is new)


i am wondering if i should try to turn my lpe11002-s into an lpe11002 by
trying to upload emulex's firmware.
here's the sticky part. this is a dual boot machine, so i don't want to
destroy its ability for solaris to
see the luns via the hbas at the expense of linux seeing the luns. but..i'm
not even sure the hba firmware is the issue..
just a hunch/worry.
does anyone know if solaris can use a non sub branded hba with the
EMLXemlxu/SUNWemlx pkgs?
does anyone have any suggestions for what i could do on the linux side to
address the above 3 issues?
does anyone know if it's pretty easy/safe to upload emulex or sun firmware to
these things?

thanks for any suggestions! :)
-mark


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