B700F120 when trying to boot AIX CD

Resolving The Problem

The customer was getting a B700F120 whenever they booted off AIX CD from SMS. The srcB700F120 means that they are trying to use an incompatible version of OS. The customer believed they were booting AIX 5.3 TL12 on a Power7 partition set into Power6+ Compatibility Mode. After talking with AIX and PHYP devs, we had the customer do the following:

1. recreate the failure
2. force a non-disruptive SYSDUMP
3. move the CD to another functioning partition and do:

• mount -rvcdrfs /dev/cd0 /mnt
• what /mnt/ppc/chrp/bootfile.exe
• send the output in

The customer did that. The SYSDUMP showed they were using Power6+ mode (internal macro dumpSflpPrstData). The bootfile data referenced 'rspc53N'. The AIX dev indicated that the information corresponded to AIX 5.3 TL8, which is not even supported in Power6 Compatibility Mode. He also suggested that we just have the customer examined the CD label. We do that all the time for IBM i, so I'm surprised it didn't dawn on me to do that here. In any case, the label to code level table can be found at this URL, following the appropriate release "Cross Reference between Maintenance levels, CD number and Release" link:

http://ausgsa.ibm.com/projects/s/service/public_html/releases/index.html#GA

The CD label LCD4-7477-11 corresponded to AIX 5.3 TL8 (known as AIX 53N). Doing the label inspection first can save a lot of time.

Steps 1-3 above should only be used when everything we can see indicates they are booting a supported release with the appropriate Processor Compatibility Mode.

Side items:
Determining the partition Processor Compatibility Mode can be done:

• On an activated partition by inspecting the Partition Properties - Hardware tab - Processor Compatibility Mode
• On a powered off partition by inspecting the Partition Profile - Processors tab - Processor compatibility mode