[Sunhelp] finding out serial #

[George Munk]

I was the one that replaced the motherboards for the CPU upgrades. I was
actually employeed by the VAR who sold the upgrades to the company at which I
now work. The upgrades were new products that came from SGI. The upgrade did not
require that a specific upgrade kit be applied to a specific machine. Upgrade
kits were selected and used completely at random and no MAC addresses/serial
numbers changed.

It seem to me that the techs' statements conflict with my observations. I
wouldn't suprise me if the techs didn't really know the details of how the
serial number works. This is not intended to be a criticism of them. I don't
think that it is realistic to expect them to know everything.

I hope I am understanding the points of your comments and adding more
clarification than confusion. If the discussion gets any deeper, it may be
appropriate to communicate directly. A summary could later be posted to the
mailing list for others.


Regards,
George Munk


On 21-Jul-2000 dhansen at zebra.net wrote:
> 
>   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