flashing orange light ....but what is it?

[hcclnoodles]

Hi there

I have an x86 SunFire x4100 box with a flashing orange warning light on the front....and i cant figure out what the problem is

Ive looked through /var/adm/messages* and there is no information of any relevance at all, its all SSH Logins and absolutely no hardware related messages (the logs are quite small)

i then used IPMITOOL as follows

# ./ipmitool sel list
SEL has no entries

So that (i believe) means there were no errors with the hardware on boot up (which was 81 days ago)

Somebody mentioned to me that its probably one of the PSU's ....but where on earth would I see that

any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[hcclnoodles]

sorry an update to this, there are three additional lights on the front of the x4100

1) top fan
2) rear PSU
3) temperature

and along with the flashing mainenance light the "rear PSU" light is also solid orange , so thats how we know its the PSU ..... however there is no indication anywhere in the OS that there is a problem ....the box is operating fine ...but its a customer production box and I need to pre-empt any problems rather than just leaving it .....rebooting is out of the question too

cheers

 

[KenCunningham]

Does:

usr/platform/`uname -i`/sbin/prtdiag -v

show anything?

I don't mind people who aren't what they seem. I just wish they'd make their mind up.

 

[hcclnoodles]

its an x86 box so prtdiag isnt there (nor does it work I believe)

 

[KenCunningham]

Apologies, wasn't aware of that. Perhaps:

http://blogs.sun.com/mws/entry/smbios_support_for_solaris_x86

could help, but it appears to be for Solaris 10 only.

I don't mind people who aren't what they seem. I just wish they'd make their mind up.

 

[hcclnoodles]

thanks

I have some further developments ....after playing a bit more with IPMITOOL, i have got the following output

# ./ipmitool chassis status
Main Power Fault : true

and then this

#./ipmitool sunoem led get all
sys.psfail.led | ON


The second one there just telling me the LED is on, which I obviously know ....but im getting somewhere.... Is this a sign that the PSU is on its way out ?? do PSUs have more than 2 states (ie Working or Broken), and does anybody know if IPMITOOL can delve any further than this or is that as far as it goes

cheers

 

[KenCunningham]

From your first post I take it you have a failover PSU? If not, perhaps the power to the primary one was interrupted at some stage causing it to issue an error? How to reset it is another matter. Otherwise, replace the faulty PSU.

I don't mind people who aren't what they seem. I just wish they'd make their mind up.

 

[coolthreads]

If its comming up as failed, log a call with Sun and get it replaced, simple as that. A ps led will be amber if it has completely failed or if it has detected a fault, but might still be working to some extent, but as I said log a call and get it replaced. You don't want to suffer an outage 'cause you delayed replacing it.