ASU failed to set or show IBMC network settings when IBMC network port is in "shared" mode - IBM System x3755 M3 (7164)

Resolving The Problem

Source

RETAIN tip: H205974

Symptom

Advanced Settings Utility (ASU) will not set or show Integrated Baseboard Management Controller (IBMC) network related settings when the System x3755 M3 IBMC network port is set to "shared" mode. All network settings fail with error code "0xd3".

The following error is reported:

Affected configurations

The system may be any of the following IBM servers:

• System x3755 M3, type 7164, any model

This tip is not software specific.

This tip is not option specific.

Solution

This behavior was corrected in a release of ASU 900.

The file is or will be available by selecting the appropriate Product Group, type of System, Product name, Product machine type, and operating system on IBM Support's Fix Central web page, at the following URL:

• http://www.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/

Workaround

There are three workarounds for this issue.

Workaround 1

Boot into F1 menu and set IBMC NETWORK working mode to "dedicated" instead of "shared".

Workaround 2

If shared mode is required, boot into F1 menu and manipulate IBMC network settings.

Workaround 3

If the user knows the IBMC Internet Protocol (IP), use the web Graphical User Interface (GUI) to manipulate IBMC network settings.

Additional information

ASU does not distinguish "dedicated" and "shared" mode before this issue happened. Different modes require different Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) commands to handle, but currently ASU uses only the command for "dedicated" mode.

In the three workarounds, two of them provide other ways to do the setting instead of using ASU, the other workaround makes ASU work by changing the mode to "dedicated".

The fix for this issue adds code support to distinguish "dedicated" and "shared" mode and then send the correct IPMI command based on the mode.