Troubleshooting
Problem
The HMC network upgrade process requires using the HMC getupgfiles. The command does not give the user much information about what its doing so additional monitoring can be helpful.
Cause
The getupgfiles command used to download network install images to the HMC is mostly a silent tool. The actions it takes are also not well documented. Understanding what getupgfiles is doing could be useful to you when doing network upgrades of the HMC.
Environment
HMC v7 or v8
Resolving The Problem
Upgrading an HMC over the network is more common than it ever has been in past revisions. The steps are pretty simple and well documented. They can be found linked off the HMC legacy support site, by searching IBM Knowledge Center or using various Internet search engines. One common link that can be found is as follows.
HMC V8 network installation images and installation instructions
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=nas8N1020108
Like all HMC command line interface (CLI) commands, there is little to no output to the user since the design intent more favored scripting. An admin can grow impatient waiting for the very large network install images to completely download to the HMC or wonder if all the files ever made it to his HMC intact. Setting up some simple monitoring can help the you understand the progress of the downloads being done by getupgfiles.
When the getupfiles command starts, it will mount one or two filesystems (depending on the version of HMC being used) and then download the network install images from a designated fix repository into the filesystem(s). The directories used by getupgfiles are as follows.
- For HMC v7 there is one directory for network image files: /hmcdump
All network image files are stored in /hmcdump.
- For HMC v8 there are two directories for network image files
(/hmcdump and /hmcboot):
/hmcdump
Files and permissions look like following.
-rw-r--r-- 1 root hmc disk1.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root hmc hmcnetworkfiles.sum
drwx------ 2 root root lost+found
/hmcboot
The boot image files are stored in /hmcboot and getupgfiles will also
create a proc subdirectory. Files and permissions look like following.
-rw-r--r-- 1 root hmc base.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root hmc img2a
-rw-r--r-- 1 root hmc img3a
drwxr-xr-x 2 root hmc proc
Before you start the getupgfiles command you can employ a simple while loop in a restricted shell on the HMC to monitor the filesystems being downloaded. The monitor might look like the following.
while true ; do
date
monhmc -r disk -n 0 | grep -E "hmcdump|hmcboot"
sleep 30
done
After getupgfiles completes the command will exit back to the prompt and the file systems it mounted will then un-mount. If you were monitoring the progress you will have a record of the latest files and sizes stored in the various filesystems. You can then move more confidently ahead with the next steps in a network install task.
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Document Information
Modified date:
17 June 2018
UID
isg3T1024980