Michal Sokolowski's questions

Model:30AT0054PB (ThinkStation P310)
SN: S4AM6910
BIOS rev: FWKT80A
ME Firmware rev: 11.0.27.3000

Has anybody have any success with running VNC via KVM/AMT connection to P310 in headless mode (without monitor)?

BIOS and Intel ME Firmware updated.

In my situation as soon as I disconnect VGA cable, the vnc client disconnects with error:

Error 0x80862000. Unsupported or inactive display adapter.

After cable reconnection the display in the client come back almost instantly.

It seems, that there's a bug in power management code.

dmidecode - detailed hardware specification

Some definition(s)/meaning(s): Stable IP address - a host within Internet Service Provider (ISP) Autonomous system (AS) network, replaying to ICMP type 8 echo request.

Genesis: My routers monitor Internet connectivity by requesting ICMP echo request (one datagram for every 5 seconds) to hosts within ISP's AS network, it gives quite enough reliable image if the link works stable or not.

Reason(s): In (very small scale) multi WAN environments (for example when using at least two different ISPs) it gives me ability to switch off unreliable link and perform the failover and quasi load balancing (done in upstreaming using source and destination IP addresses). For the redundancy my routers usually monitor two hosts in ISP network at the same time and when both addresses are not responsive then the router is able to distinguish ISP's reachability and to switch off given gateway.

Address searching methodology which I'd like to improve: My production tests (almost a year, 99,99% uptime) shows that ISPs the primary DNS server and the first MX server of the domain owned by the ISP are quite reliable way to give me ICMP echo response at almost all time.

Digression: Let's say that I know what BGP is and that it's a proper way to do this, but I cannot afford it because of the cost and micro scale business.

Question: My main concern is that whole thing depends on IP addresses ability to change. I am looking for addresses (methodology to find those addresses) which will be the most possible painful for an ISP to change. Is there something which can be improved - in terms of IP address stability? I'm thinking about ISP's border routers, but I cannot find a way to reliable determine those IPs and I am not sure if it'll be more "stable". Any ideas/opinions?

We have (quite an old, yeah) HP ML115 G5 AMD based server which shuts itself off 10-15s later (during fan test I suppose) after pushing the power button and before BIOS POST single beep appears.

We need some help with remote (200 km) hardware failure diagnosis. Our hardware specification is as follows:

root@linux:~/# dmidecode -t1
# dmidecode 2.12
SMBIOS 2.5 present.

System Information
        Manufacturer: HP
        Product Name: ProLiant ML115 G5
        Serial Number: CZC94743QJ
         SKU Number: 470064-894`

root@linux:~/# head -n 30 dmidecode.txt 
# dmidecode 2.12

Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 24 bytes
BIOS Information
        Vendor: HP
        Version: O18    
        Release Date: 07/06/2009

At this point it works stably. I've managed to turn it on by:

• turning the server off,
• removing the power cord for five minutes,
• putting it to the ground on the longer edge, CPU heatsink turned in the direction of ceiling.

If we put it into standard position as it is supposed to stand it doesn't turn on like I wrote at the beginning. Totally reproducible.

Voltage/Temp/Fans stats look okay to me:

root@linux:~/# ipmitool sdr
POST Error       | Not Readable      | ns
Memory ECC       | Not Readable      | ns
ACPI State       | 0x01              | ok
PCI Reset        | 0x00              | ok
CPU Fan          | 1048.88 RPM       | ok
Rear Fan         | 2107.04 RPM       | ok
CPU Diode        | 26.50 degrees C   | ok
Front Ambient    | 19 degrees C      | ok
System 12V       | 11.93 Volts       | ok
System 5V        | 5.12 Volts        | ok
System AUX 5V    | 4.98 Volts        | ok
System 3.3V      | 3.39 Volts        | ok
System AUX 3.3V  | 3.33 Volts        | ok
CPU Vcore        | 1.07 Volts        | ok
CPU 12V          | 11.82 Volts       | ok
HT 1.2V          | 1.20 Volts        | ok
Mem Vcore        | 1.81 Volts        | ok
MEM VTT          | 0.90 Volts        | ok
MCP55 1.5V       | 1.50 Volts        | ok
MCP55 1.4V       | 1.40 Volts        | ok
Therm-Trip       | 0x00              | ok
CPU Prochot      | 0x00              | ok
System Reset     | 0x00              | ok
NMI              | 0x00              | ok
PCI Error        | Not Readable      | ns
CPU Socket       | 0x01              | ok
LO100 Present    | 0x00              | ok
Watchdog         | Not Readable      | ns

IPMI events:

  18 | 03/18/2015 | 09:29:46 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Asserted
  30 | 03/18/2015 | 09:30:08 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
  48 | 03/18/2015 | 10:38:59 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Asserted
  60 | 03/18/2015 | 10:39:20 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
  78 | 03/18/2015 | 10:45:26 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Asserted
  90 | 03/18/2015 | 10:45:30 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Deasserted
  a8 | 03/18/2015 | 10:45:56 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Asserted
  c0 | 03/18/2015 | 10:46:12 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
  d8 | 03/18/2015 | 10:48:42 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Asserted
  f0 | 03/18/2015 | 10:48:46 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Deasserted
 108 | 03/18/2015 | 10:49:04 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Asserted
 120 | 03/18/2015 | 10:49:18 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
 138 | 03/18/2015 | 10:50:24 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Asserted
 150 | 03/18/2015 | 10:50:25 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
 168 | 03/18/2015 | 10:57:53 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Asserted
 180 | 03/18/2015 | 10:57:57 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Deasserted
 198 | 03/18/2015 | 10:58:24 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Asserted
 1b0 | 03/18/2015 | 10:58:41 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
 1c8 | 03/18/2015 | 11:14:23 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Asserted
 1e0 | 03/18/2015 | 11:15:06 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Deasserted
 1f8 | 03/18/2015 | 11:16:33 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Asserted
 210 | 03/18/2015 | 11:16:33 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
 228 | 03/18/2015 | 11:49:12 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Asserted
 240 | 03/18/2015 | 11:49:18 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Deasserted
 258 | 03/18/2015 | 11:55:45 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Asserted
 270 | 03/18/2015 | 11:55:46 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Deasserted
 288 | 03/18/2015 | 11:56:32 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Asserted
 2a0 | 03/18/2015 | 11:57:06 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
 2b8 | 03/18/2015 | 12:00:11 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Asserted
 2d0 | 03/18/2015 | 12:00:14 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Deasserted
 2e8 | 03/18/2015 | 12:00:59 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Non-critical going high | Asserted
 300 | 03/18/2015 | 12:01:34 | Temperature #0x20 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
 318 | 07/06/2009 | 00:00:22 | Fan #0x42 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
 330 | 11/13/2016 | 13:25:47 | Fan #0x41 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
 348 | 11/13/2016 | 13:33:00 | Fan #0x41 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
 360 | 11/13/2016 | 13:33:47 | Fan #0x41 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
 378 | 11/13/2016 | 13:44:58 | Fan #0x41 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
 390 | 11/13/2016 | 13:45:48 | Fan #0x41 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
 3a8 | 11/13/2016 | 13:47:45 | Fan #0x41 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
 3c0 | 12/01/2016 | 17:00:29 | Fan #0x41 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
 3d8 | 12/01/2016 | 17:01:53 | Fan #0x41 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
 3f0 | 12/01/2016 | 17:04:02 | Fan #0x41 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
 408 | 12/01/2016 | 17:31:34 | Fan #0x41 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted
 420 | 12/01/2016 | 17:43:42 | Fan #0x41 | Upper Critical going high | Asserted

11/13/2016 it happened to me first time, I thought it could be hardware watchdog, so we disabled it in BIOS.

The server has 2x1TB disks, 2x3TB without optical drive. 365 watts non-hot plug, non-redundant power supply.

Now, we recommended to replace the box, but as far as I am concerned I cannot explain why this is happening (I assume it's some sort of mechanical mainboard failure). I wonder if You have any other ideas.

** Update, mr Chopper3 asked what I meant with but CPU one is not standard. So, original hatsink has been damaged like this:

Time and bad material choice, plastic was not meant to be durable under constant pressures. I've never seen plastic mount since that setup anymore in any other boxes...

Server has been kept in fair conditions, never overheated, not in the direct influence of the Sun, nobody touched it during work.

It was about 1,5 year ago. We couldn't find original HP part anymore on the market. We replaced it with 3 times larger one, because AM2 sockets were not so popular at given time. I cannot remember now if it has had 2 signaling wires plus VCC and GND (4) like stock posted above. It could have just three. VCC + GND and rotation signaling (3). From that point of time we had multiple power outages and situation like this never happened.

The question is not around Solidworks actually, so please continue to read.

The whole idea of virtualization is to be hardware independent. Before our eyes a whole new dependency level is being created - affixment to the hypervisor.

As far as I know searching in a way to find a workaround of this problem is not violation of the Solidworks license and local law in my country.

My client and I want to activate Solidworks Products on KVM virtual machine. For some weird reasons (Hyper-V and VMware are supposed to be well tested :) they (developers) of Solidworks 2015 PDM don't want their products to be activated (last 2014 version worked just fine) on Qemu-KVM.

http://www.solidworks.com/sw/support/11168_ENU_HTML.htm

I am using:

As you can see it's KVM-based VM with Windows 2012 and Solidworks PDM installation.

Question: What else can they check if I am running my VM in Qemu-KVM besides checking:

• MAC address(es) of VM's Ethernet adapter,
• Device driver labels,
• CPU model,
• ACPI tables.

I am going to rule out the above mentioned things in next few hours, but I'd like to know if You have any other ideas.

Solution:

It turns out they validate two things:

1. As Michael Hampton correctly pointed there's -cpu,kvm=off option

to disable the CPUID 0x40000000 leaf.

2. ACPI Tables on the guest.

Relevant parts of qemu command line parameters:

-cpu host,kvm=off -smbios type=0,vendor=LENOVO,version=FBKTB4AUS,date=07/01/2015,release=1.180 -smbios type=1,manufacturer=LENOVO,product=30AH001GPB,version=ThinkStation P300,serial=S4M88119,uuid=cecf333d-6603-e511-97d5-6c0b843f98ba,sku=LENOVO_MT_30AH,family=P300

Libvirtd config file syntax:

<domain type='kvm' xmlns:qemu='http://libvirt.org/schemas/domain/qemu/1.0'>
# Please notice there is xmlns definition in <domain> tag. Without it 
# <qemu:commandline> and <qemu:arg> tags won't work.
  <name>acm-server</name>
  <uuid>d0e14081-b4a0-23b5-ae39-110a686b0e55</uuid>
  <memory unit='KiB'>81920000</memory>
  <currentMemory unit='KiB'>81920000</currentMemory>
  <vcpu placement='static'>4</vcpu>
  <os>
    <type arch='x86_64' machine='pc-1.1'>hvm</type>
    <boot dev='hd'/>
    <bootmenu enable='yes'/>
  </os>
  <features>
    <acpi/>
    <apic/>
    <pae/>
  </features>
# Please notice there is no CPU definition on the top.
  <qemu:commandline>
    <qemu:arg value='-cpu'/>
    <qemu:arg value='host,kvm=off'/>
    <qemu:arg value='-smbios'/>
    <qemu:arg value='type=0,vendor=LENOVO,version=FBKTB4AUS,date=07/01/2015,release=1.180'/>
    <qemu:arg value='-smbios'/>
    <qemu:arg value='type=1,manufacturer=LENOVO,product=30AH001GPB,version=ThinkStation P300,serial=S4M88119,uuid=cecf333d-6603-e511-97d5-6c0b843f98ba,sku=LENOVO_MT_30AH,family=P3'/>
  </qemu:commandline>
</domain>

As a proof, now it wants to activate:

Update 21.04.2017r. DS Justice mentioned that Qemu (I used virtio in this example) disk mode may be relevant as well.