[Sunhelp] finding out serial #

[dhansen at zebra.net]

  When I referred to having verified information regarding the serial number
handling with SGI's, I meant that I put a call in to SGI and spoke to two
of their technicians who informed me of the fact that they use the serial
numbers of the motherboards as the serial numbers for the entire system.

  Whether or not they format it in such a way that a system's serial number
can also be used as the initial MAC address or whether or not a warrantied
replacement of motherboards includes the practice of setting the serial
number on the replacement motherboard to match the one on the faulty
original.. I do not know and did not ask.

  My curiousity honestly only extended to as far as wondering what
they did to make a serial number for an entire system accessible through
some single components' nvram/rom/whatever. The SGI's that I do have to
deal with are only on a part time basis for a company that I consult for
and I do not have any desire to ask them to let me take them apart and
play with them. My effort in the quest stopped at just asking SGI 
themselves what they did in this matter.

  I guess a good question to see if your observations are more correct
than the SGI tech's statements would be if the motherboards you
exchanged were new products (from SGI directly or some 3rd party vendor)
or if they were used products (from SGI directly or some 3rd party vendor
or individual). If they were used and from an individual and your serial
number did not change then I would hazard the guess that the SGI techs'
were wrong. If it was one of the other possibilities then it probably stands
a good chance that your records were accessed and the replacements 
were configured to match that information. Otherwise, in any kind of record
keeping (inventory system) they would have to have built entirely new
records for your upgraded systems, ported the data from your old records over,
and then wiped the old records or linked them into a history of sorts for the
new records.

 -david

> 
> Not quite. I have exchanged motherboards only and the serial number has stayed
> the same. A good example was when we upgraded several Indigo2's from R4400
> processors to R10000. The upgrade involved exchanging the entire motherboard.
> The serial numbers of the upgraded systems stayed the same. I believe that
> NVRAM parameters were also maintained. This makes me think that the MAC
> address/serial number is burned into a ROM that along with the NVRAM, is
> attached to the case, not the motherboard. It would also imply that the NIC
> doesn't get its MAC address from itself, but from the ROM (or where ever). On
> an O2, the MAC address/serial number is maintained in the PCI expansion tray
> which attaches to the motherboard.
> 
> All of this information comes from observation only so it may not be exactly
> correct. Is anyone aware of official documentation from SGI on how this works?
> Other SGI models may have different methods of maintaining the same serial
> number. But SGI does seem to understand that keeping the same system identifier
> is important since licensed software frequently uses it. A good is example is
> the popular FlexLM license manager. The "lmhostid" returned comes from the MAC
> address/serial number.
> 
> % nvram eaddr
> 08:00:69:uv:wx:yz                  (u,v,w,x,y,z are hexadecimal characters)
> % ./lmhostid
> lmhostid - Copyright (C) 1989-1994 Globetrotter Software, Inc.
> The FLEXlm host ID of this machine is "69uvwxyz"
> 
> I agree, SGI and SUN have taken different approaches that can not be compared.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> George Munk
> 
> 
> On 20-Jul-2000 dhansen at zebra.net wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >>Octane but not Indigo), the system serial number is the Ethernet MAC
> >>address.
> >>When hardware has been exchanged due to failure, the replacement system
> >>has had the original's MAC address/serial number.
> >> % nvram eaddr
> >> 08:00:69:uv:wx:yz
> >> Serial number = 080069uvwxyz
> >>George Munk
> > 
> >   I didn't check into the relationship between the system serial number and
> > the
> > MAC address of a system's original/primary NIC, but I was able to verify that
> > any
> > attempt to compare SGI's method with SUN's is unfair. SGI uses the serial
> > number for the motherboard as the serial number for the entire system and
> > SUN provides a means of grabbing the serial number from the mainboard. The
> > serial number for the motherboard is where amsysinfo and nvram are getting 
> > their information (not from a NIC or the MSC). This means that anytime you 
> > change just the motherboard and nothing else, then your system's serial
> > number 
> > will be changed as well and should be noted as such in your inventory.
> > 
> >  -david
> 
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