Hardware Management Console Readme

For use with Version 4 Release 4

Date: January 12, 2005

(C) Copyright International Business Machines Corp., 2004 All rights reserved.
 

Introduction

The information in this Readme contains hints and errata information about the Hardware Management Console. Please consult the HMC's technical support Web site for up to date information. (http://techsupport.services.ibm.com/server/hmc/power5).

All releases of the HMC Version 4.x machine code will manage an iSeries Server, but a pSeries Server requires HMC Version 4.2 (or greater) machine code.

 

Hints and Tips:

·       To launch the browser, right mouse click on the desktop to bring up the menu. Select "Net" and then "Browser".

·       To start a restricted shell terminal, right mouse click on the desktop to bring up the menu. Select "Terminals" and then "rshterm".

·       Currently, HMC only stores 4 service processor dumps and 4 platform system dumps per managed system.

·       Changes of a partition profile do not apply to the partition immediately. The changes will only take effect on the partition when activation is done through the profile.

·       If users are interested in keylock positions and SRC values when performing Operator Panel Service Functions through Service Focal Point, they can be viewed from the Server and Partition plugin.

·       To view system event logs, you must login as a user with ‘hmcpe role. From Service Applications, select Service Focal Point -> Service Utilities -> Actions -> View Problem Logs.

·       The HMC can support 16 concurrent licensed internal code updates on all systems except the p5 595, i5 595, p5 590 and p5 575. The HMC can only support one p5 595, i5 595,p5 590 and p5 575 concurrent licensed internal code update at a time.

·       HMC Version 4 Release 2 or higher is required to manage pSeries Power5 servers.

 

Enhancements and Changes in V4R4

HMC Version 4 Release 3 and up now enables Ext3 File System. If you wish to take advantage of journaled file system, you must install or upgrade your HMC using the Version 4 Release 3 and  up Recovery CDs.

 

Server and Partition:

·       Server Management:

o      i5/OS partitions on pSeries systems

HMC Command Line:

·       The following commands have been added:

·       chusrtca – manages the display of a Terms and Conditions agreement to all users who log in locally to the HMC

·       lsusrtca – lists the status of the display of a Terms and Conditions agreement to all users who log in locally to the HMC

·       lssysconn – lists connection information for systems and frames managed by the HMC

·       sendfile – transfers a file from the HMC to a remote system using File Transfer Protocol

·       An option has been added to the chsysstate command to power off all of the unowned I/O units in a managed frame.

·       An option has been added to the lsvet command to display the Virtualization Engine systems technologies activation history log.

 

 

Known Issues:

Server and Partition:

·       If a checkstop occurs on the managed system and the system recovers, but access to that managed system's virtual terminal is lost, do the following to restore the virtual terminal:

1.    On the HMC, right click on the managed system name that lost the virtual terminal.

2.    From the pop-up menu, select "Reset or Remove Connection".

3.    Then select "Reset Connection" and click OK.

·       Dynamic partition configuration for memory move can take a while. During that time, no other operation can be performed.

·       When selecting multiple I/O slots for dynamic partition configuration, it will stop on the first failure.

·       After configuring your network setting, make sure to reboot your HMC. Otherwise, dynamic logical partitioning for AIX/Linux partitions may not work.

·       Users cannot change virtual Opticonnect and HSL Opticonnect settings through the GUI without activating the changes through a partition profile. Users can change the settings dynamically through the command line interface.

Usage: chhwres -m <managed system name> -r virtualio –-rsubtype virtualopti -p <partition name> -o s –a “virtual_opti_pool_id=[0|1]”

Usage: chhwres –m <managed system name> -r virtualio -–rsubtype hsl –p <partition name> -o s –a “hsl_pool_id=[0|1]”

·       Error messages for some Dynamic Logical Partitioning tasks give ‘AIX’ as the partition type even though it’s actually a Linux partition.

·       Unable to perform Dynamic Logical Partitioning virtual I/O remove operations if the partition does not have a current profile.

National Language Support:

·       Mnemonics are not supported in double byte and ru locales.

·       The HMC uses several external components. These components are not developed by the HMC team and are translated as part of a separate translation plan and schedule. The mix of English and translated text is an unavoidable situation and has the potential to occur anytime the HMC is updated or pulls in a new version of an external application that is updated in between its normally scheduled translation cycles. 

·       Due to the limitation of groff, some characters in the output of "man" command might be corrupted in traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese and Korean when the window is too narrow. Widen the window and retry the command again.

·       Korean input is supported. Press Shift-Space to switch between English and Korean input mode.

·       Traditional and Simplified Chinese input is supported in zh_TW and zh_CN locales. Press CTRL-Space to switch between English and Chinese  input mode. Press CTRL-Shift to select an input method. Press space bar to see more Chinese characters.

·       Japanese input is supported. Press Shift-Space to switch between English and Japanese input mode.

·       User ID, User information, HMC User password, Partition name, managed system name, profile name and system  profile name are in English only.

·       IBM275 doesn't work well when connecting from IBM Personal Communications or iSeries Access to an HMC. Use another Brazil codepage. The codepage "IBM930 Japan Katakana" doesn't work well either. Use "IBM930 Japan Katakana Extended" instead.

·       An ibm5250 session opened on the HMC locally will be in the same locale as the one that is set for the HMC. To open a session in a different locale, change the HMC locale first, logout, login and then invoke ibm5250. The other option is to connect to the HMC using a remote emulator, e.g. IBM Personal Communications or iSeries Access, in the desired locale.

 

 

Miscellaneous Functions:

·       Help Search is not supported. However, Find is supported for Help.

·       Printing is not supported.

·       The numerical keypad on some keyboards doesn't work. Use the normal numerical keys instead.

·       When your power5 system is shipped to you it is in a non-HMC managed mode by default. Once you attach and set up an HMC to manage your power5 system, the default non-HMC managed mode is exited. The procedure to return to the default non-HMC managed mode is documented on the InfoCenter website under “Resetting the server to a non partitioned configuration”. The following link will redirect you to the document.

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/eserver/v1r2s/en_US/info/iphbl/iphblresetserver.htm

 

Security Fixes:

Cert

bug summary

CAN-2004-0415

SECURITY: kernel: local privilege escalation, race condition in file offset pointer handling

VU#550464

CAN-2004-0644

SECURITY: krb5: remote unauthenticated DoS

no cert.

SECURITY: Kernel: unannounced security patches (audit & queued signals)...

CAN-2004-0817

 

Security: imlib: local execution via heap overflow

CAN-2004-0687

CAN-2004-0688

SECURITY: xf86: multiple buffer overflows with malformed xpm images

no cert.

 

SECURITY: gettext: Insecure temporary file handling

CAN-2004-0804

 

SECURITY: tiff: Buffer overflows in image decoding

CAN-2004-0975

SECURITY: Openssl: possible symlink attack via temp file mishandling

can-2004-0940

SECURITY: Apache: local buffer overflow in get_tag function in mod_include

no cert.

SECURITY: xf86: SuSE security updates for libxpm

no cert.

SECURITY: imlib: SuSE xpm security updates in imlib

CAN-2004-0989

 

SECURITY: libxml: remote code execution, buffer overflow

CAN-2004-0971

SECURITY: krb5: krb5-workstation: Possible symlink attack, priv escalation via temproary file mishandling

Trustix Secure Linux Security Advisory #2004-0053

SECURITY: Cyrus-sasl: (ver 1.5.27) Insecure handling of environment variable