
Error Reporting and Handling
Intel® Server Board SE7520BD2 Technical Product Specification
116
Revision
1.3
5.2.3
FRB-1 – BSP Self-Test Failures
In addition to the FRB-3 and FRB-2 timers, the BIOS provides an FRB-1 watchdog timer. Early
in POST, the BIOS checks the Built-in Self Test (BIST) results of the BSP. If the BSP fails
BIST, the BIOS requests the BMC to disable the BSP. The BMC disables the BSP, selects a
new BSP and generates a system reset. If there is no alternate processor available, the BMC
beeps the system speaker and halts the system.
The BIST failure is indicated to the user by displaying a message during POST and logging an
error to the SEL.
5.2.4
OS Boot Timer - OS Load Failures
The BIOS provides an OS Boot Timer to provide Fault Resilient Booting to the OS. The BIOS
enables this watchdog timer in the BMC with the number of minutes as set in BIOS Setup. This
option is disabled by default. It is the responsibility of the OS or an application to disable this
timer once it has successfully loaded.
Warning:
Enabling this option without first installing an operating system or a server
management application that supports this feature will cause the system to reboot when the
timer expires. Consult your application or operating system vendor to see if this feature is
supported.
5.2.5
Application Processor (AP) Failures
The BIOS and BMC implement additional safeguards to detect and disable the application
processors (AP) in a multiprocessor system. If an AP fails to complete initialization within a
certain timeframe, it is assumed to be non-functional. If the BIOS detects that an AP has failed
BIST or is non-functional, it requests the BMC to disable that processor. Processors disabled by
the BMC are not available for use by the BIOS or the OS. Since the processors are unavailable,
they are not listed in any configuration tables including the SMBIOS tables.
5.2.6
Treatment of Failed Processors
All failures (FRB-3, FRB-2, FRB-1, and AP failures) including the failing processor are recorded
in the system event log (SEL). The FRB-3 failure is recorded automatically by the BMC while
the FRB-2, FRB-1, and AP failures are logged to the SEL by the BIOS. In the case of an FRB-2
failure, some systems will log additional information into the OEM data byte fields of the SEL
entry. This additional data indicates the last POST task that was executed before the FRB-2
timer expired. This information may be useful for failure analysis.
Note
: The BMC maintains a failure history table for each processor in nonvolatile storage. Once
a processor is marked failed, it remains failed until the user selects the “Retest Processors”
option in the <F2>BIOS Setup Utility which forces the system to retest the processor and clear
the log.
The BIOS reminds the user about a previous processor failure during each boot cycle until all
processors have been retested and successfully pass the FRB tests or AP initialization. If all the
processors are bad, the system does not alter the BSP and attempts to boot from the original
BSP. Error messages are displayed on the console, and errors are logged in the event log of a
processor failure.
If the user replaces a processor that has been marked bad by the system, the system must be
informed about this change by running BIOS Setup and selecting that processor to be retested.