Using "asr-disable" to disable PCI slots from OK prompt – Servers V440 or V490

System Administrators encounter frequent issues with onboard PCI slots after the maintenance operations like the OS upgrades, patch installations and firmware upgrades. And often it will leave us in a situation that we couldn’t  boot up the machine, because of the issues to recognize PCI slots after the maintenance. To troubleshoot the issue and to consider the operation like patch / firmware rollback, we should boot the machine without PCI slots.

For the models like V440 and V490, we have one nice command to disable the onboard devices safely, i,e, asr-disable. And the functionality of “asr-disable” command not limited to PCI slots alone, but we disable various hardware components of motherboard as part fault diagnosis.

In this post I will be explaining you the procedure to disable online PCI slots, which are normally used to host the HBA adapters for external SAN storage.

Procedure DISABLE PCI slot on V440

ok .asr
ASR Disablement Status
Component: Status

CPU/Memory: Enabled
PCI Slots: Enabled

ok show-devs
/i2c@1f,464000
…
/pci@1d,700000/lpfc@1
…
ok asr-disable /pci@1d,700000/lpfc@1
ok .asr
ASR Disablement Status
Component: Status

CPU/Memory: Enabled
PCI Slots: Enabled

The following devices have been ASR disabled:
/pci@1d,700000/lpfc@1

ok boot net:dhcp – install
…

*** FCode LP9002 PCI_Bus (lpfc) Version 1.41a4 ***

Sun Fire V440, No Keyboard
Copyright 1998-2004 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
OpenBoot 4.16.4, 8192 MB memory installed, Serial #60710277.
Ethernet address 0:3:ba:9e:5d:85, Host ID: 839e5d85.

WARNING: Device /pci@1d,700000/lpfc@1 being marked with ‘status’ == fail-disabled by command
Rebooting with command: boot net:dhcp – install
Boot device: /pci@1c,600000/network@2:dhcp File and args: – install
/pci@1c,600000/network@2: 100 Mbps full duplex link up
Timeout waiting for BOOTP/DHCP reply. Retrying …
Timeout waiting for BOOTP/DHCP reply. Retrying …
4000 /pci@1c,600000/network@2: 100 Mbps full duplex link up

Requesting Ethernet address for: 172.16.82.1
SunOS Release 5.10 Version Generic_118822-25 64-bit
Copyright 1983-2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Use is subject to license terms.
WARNING: status ‘fail-disabled by command’ for ‘/pci@1d,700000/lpfc@1’

The V440 also supports device aliases or lables instead of a device path. The label can be seen by not giving any options to asr-disable or asr-enable.

ok asr-disable

Usage: asr-disable
Where is an absolute device path, a device alias, or a device label.
Valid device labels include:
pci-slot5 pci-slot4 pci-slot3 pci-slot2
pci-slot1 pci-slot0 ob-net1 ob-net0
ob-usb1 ob-usb0 ob-ide ob-scsi
cpu3-bank3 cpu3-bank2 cpu3-bank1 cpu3-bank0
cpu2-bank3 cpu2-bank2 cpu2-bank1 cpu2-bank0
cpu1-bank3 cpu1-bank2 cpu1-bank1 cpu1-bank0
cpu0-bank3 cpu0-bank2 cpu0-bank1 cpu0-bank0

Procedure DISABLE PCI slot on V440

 
ok .asr
ASR Disablement Status
Component: Status

CMP/Memory: Enabled
IO-Bridge8: Enabled
IO-Bridge9: Enabled
GPTwo Slots: Enabled
Onboard FCAL: Enabled
Onboard Net1: Enabled
Onboard Net0: Enabled
Onboard IDE: Enabled
PCI Slots: Enabled

The following devices have been ASR disabled:
/pci@8,600000/emlx@2
/pci@8,600000/emlx@1