On 2009-12-27, doofus <> wrote:
>
> Today I put OpenBSD 4.6 onto a consoleless Ultra 60 (2 x 450MHz), and
> noticed a worrying error in the installer boot messages:
>
> "isp0: invalid NVRAM header"
>
> Can anyone tell me what this actually means and/or if it's fixable?
This probably means that the cell in the NVRAM package is dying.
The NVRAM package contains what it set by the eeprom command from a
booted Solaris system, or from the "set" command at the OBP level before
booting. It is a NVRAM and the TOD clock combined in a single package,
and they typically last about ten years on a system powered up full
time, or somewhat less on a system which is powered down most of the
time.
It is important, because it contains a lot of critical bits of
information, including the hostid (which tells the OS where to look for
various interfaces) and the ethernet MAC address.
Sun will sell you a fresh one -- with the right hostid and MAC
address if you give them the barcode number from the old package. If
you don't have any licensed software on the
system (especially if you don't have Solaris on there) it would not make
any difference if you swapped in one from another system.
When you power up -- what is shown as the HOSTID on the screen,
and what is shown as the MAC address? If these are unreasonable for the
computer, then the dead/dying battery is likely.
On the Ultra-60, the chip is U2706, socketed under the power
supply near the last DIMMs (most distant from the CPU modules).
The first two digits of the HOSTID for the Ultra-60 should be
"80".
The chip is a 48T59 NVRAM (with clock chip, battery and crystal
included). Sun's part number for it is 525-1430. It is possible to
carefully dig into the chip and cut loose the leads going to the cell to
connect them to an external cell. Search on "IDPROM" for the web sites
which explain how to do it. But if you have to repair the chip, you
will need to recreate HOSTID and MAC address. It is good practice, if
you can't find the original MAC address to instead get one from an
ancient ethernet card for an old PC, and destroy the ROM which sets the
MAC address in that card so you will never have another system using the
same MAC address. It is certainly bad news on a local net to have two
duplicates, and I don't know what would happen over the internet if two
systems with the same MAC address happened to connect to each other.
> I think the isp device is the SunSwift combined ethernet/scsi PCI card
> I have in the machine. It also carries an Expert 3D card and a no-name
> USB 2 card.
The driver for "isp" probably handles a lot of things on the
system board, so it could be almost anything -- but the NVRAM bit is
pretty clear.
> I have the latest 3.31 openboot firmware on there, set to defaults,
> and all three SCA disks (two inside, one in a Unipack on the primary
> SCSI bus - not the SunSwift) are identical 300GB Seagates.
>
> A quick search turns up plenty of similar reports, but no one seems to
> know what to do about it.
Get a replacement chip from Sun -- or perform surgery on the
chip to extend its life.
> Thanks in advance for any advice offered.
>
>
> (I guess c.s.s.h should be the first place to ask, but it it seems to
> be dying before our eyes...)
Well ... it is where *I* saw this, and answered it. And it is
where several other replies are (which I have not yet read). It may be
that your news server has dropped it, if you see this only in the other
newsgroup. (I've left the cross-posting intact, in case that is what is
happening to you.
Good Luck,
DoN.
--
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