[Sunhelp] finding out serial #

[George Munk]

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