SUMMARY: hba name anomaly

Hello,

Thanks to everyone who replied. The most helpful comments came from Mr.
Koef and Mr. Andrey Borzenkov (their comments are included in this
email).

Shortly, I had problems with fcode load for the other of two seemingly
identical adapters but with different names.

Looks like the other HBA is an original QLogic HBA and the other is Sun
branded QLogic HBA. The adapters have identical hardware but different
NVRAM & FCode.

Br,
Jarkko

-----Original Message-----
From: Koef [mailto:koef@notsupported.org]
Sent: jueves, 23 de noviembre de 2006 23:45
To: Jarkko Airaksinen
Subject: Re: Another Partial Summary: hba name anomaly

On Thu, Nov 23, 2006 at 08:41:37PM +0100, Jarkko Airaksinen wrote:

>         SUNW,qlc, instance #0
>
>         fibre-channel, instance #4

It appears you have one original Qlogic HBA (fibre-channel, instance #4)
and
one Sun branded Qlogic HBA (SUNW,qlc, instance #0). They are
hardware-wise
identical, but Sun changed NVRAM and Fcode.

Apparently in your system the Sun branded card is detected first by the
kernel, and the Solaris qlc driver is loaded. It then also attaches to
the
original Qlogic HBA. The driver you downloaded and installed from Qlogic
will not be used. This is why luxadm and MPxIO (failover) works on both
cards.
If you had two original Qlogic cards, and installed the Qlogic (qla2300)
driver, luxadm and MPxIO wouldn't have worked. Conversely, if you have
two
original Qlogic cards and do not install qla2300 driver, Solaris qlc
driver
will attach and you have luxadm and MPxIO.

So, the original Qlogic HBA and the Sun branded Qlogic HBA are pretty
much
interchangeable and you can choose between functionalities by changing
drivers. The only remaining differences are due to Fcode and NVRAM and
affect such issues as:

- Booting from the HBA
- OBP queries to the HBA
- Reading the HBA's WWNN address with "prtconf" or "luxadm"
- Fcode download

These functionalities are not available when using original Qlogic HBA
driven by the Solaris qlc driver. If you have a need for them, there are
tricks to "rebrand" an original Qlogic HBA to Sun branded. I can dig up
the
procedure if you want.

Summary: your HBA setup is just fine.

Last words: If you are connecting to storage devices such as EMC you
will
run into trouble when seeking EMC support in case of problems: an
original
Qlogic HBA driven by the Solaris qlc driver is not "certified" and they
will
reject your support ticket.

Good luck,

--
Koef.

---
Then the email from Andrey:

Jarkko Airaksinen wrote:

> For some reason scli shows the adapters' models to be different:
[...]
> HBA Model                  : QLA2310
[...]
> Driver Version             : qlc-20060630-2.16
>
> FCode Version              : 1.14.15
[...]
> HBA Model                  : qlc
[...]
> Driver Version             : qlc-20060630-2.16
>
> FCode Version              : N/A
[...]
> Due to this difference also the devices are in different paths. In
> dmesg they show as:
>
>         SUNW,qlc, instance #0
>
>         fibre-channel, instance #4
>
>
>
> Do I really have two different models of adapters or is the model
> difference due to some misconfiguration? The firmware versions match
> though, as well as the driver version.
>

One has FCode installed and another not. SFS drivers require FCode; I am
surprised, it even shows qc driver for the second one. I suspect, the
first one is Sun branded and the second one - original QLogic?



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