sun fire v20z: service processor troubleshooting

i usually check the service processors (sp) of my machines quite frequently. recently i had several occurances regarding sp system events on different sun fire v20z servers. so let’s troubleshoot some of them.

[code]xxxxx-sp $ sp get events
ID Last Update Component Severity Message
2 11/27/2005 22:55 SP informational Error deserializing events
3 12/13/2005 12:11 SP informational Error deserializing events
[...]
9 08/07/2006 18:29 SP warning System event capacity exceeded. 0 events purged [0 critical, 0 warning, 0 informational], 194 historical records purged[/code]

what does this mean?

Error deserializing events

according to appendix b of the “Sun Fire V20z and Sun Fire V40z Servers Troubleshooting Techniques and Diagnostics Guide ” (sun no. 817-7184-12) this occurs while the system is not shutting down properly (see table b-31):

The Event Manager Event Data storage has been corrupted and some event data has been lost. This usually occurs if the event manager shuts down improperly (application failure) or if the service processor is rebooted at an unexpected time (PRS or user reset).

but i guess this cannot be the only reason for this (informational) error, because the system has an uptime of several hundred days – so it hasn’t been shut down. i don’t know where this comes from. perhaps some of my fellow readers know the exact cause and may leave a comment clarifiying the issue.

System event capacity exceeded

this is nothing to worry about. the internal memory that holds the event list is full and needs to flush so that it may contain more up-to-date entries. this warning occurs frequently, depending on the amount of other events.

..more to come..