Sun Fire[TM] E25K, E20K, E15K, E12K : "showboards" may report invalid power values when the locale is not set to "C"

Asset ID:	1-72-1019902.1
Update Date:	2017-12-06
Keywords:

Solution Type Problem Resolution Sure

Solution 1019902.1 : Sun Fire[TM] E25K, E20K, E15K, E12K : "showboards" may report invalid power values when the locale is not set to "C"

Applies to:

Sun Fire 12K Server - Version Not Applicable and later
Sun Fire 15K Server - Version Not Applicable and later
Sun Fire E20K Server - Version Not Applicable and later
Sun Fire E25K Server - Version Not Applicable and later
All Platforms

Symptoms

"showboards" reports all running boards' "Pwr" status as "Unk" and is "Unable to retrieve board info for" those boards.
If Sun Explorer is run, the command output looks normal as expected.

This is the flawed output
sms-svc:2> showboards

Retrieving board information. Please wait.
.......
Location Pwr Type of Board Board Status Test Status Domain
-------- --- ------------- ------------ ----------- ------
SB0 Unk CPU Active Passed A
SB1 Unk V3CPU Assigned Failed A
SB2 Off CPU Available Unknown Isolated
SB3 Unk CPU Active Passed D
SB4 Off CPU Assigned Unknown E
SB5 Off CPU Assigned Unknown F
SB6 Off CPU Assigned Unknown E
SB7 Off V3CPU Assigned Unknown I
SB8 Unk V3CPU Available Unknown Isolated
...

Unable to retrieve board info for: SB0
Unable to retrieve board info for: SB1
Unable to retrieve board info for: SB3
Unable to retrieve board info for: SB8
...

The correct output looks like this:

sms-svc:2> showboards
Retrieving board information. Please wait.
...............
Location Pwr Type of Board Board Status Test Status Domain
-------- --- ------------- ------------ ----------- ------
SB0 On CPU Active Passed A
SB1 Unk V3CPU Assigned Failed A
SB2 Off CPU Available Unknown Isolated
SB3 On CPU Active Passed D
SB4 Off CPU Assigned Unknown E
SB5 Off CPU Assigned Unknown F
SB6 Off CPU Assigned Unknown E
SB7 Off V3CPU Assigned Unknown I
SB8 On V3CPU Available Unknown Isolated
...

Changes

Cause

Locale settings incorrect

Solution

Resolution
Please check the locale setting and force LC_ALL to be set to "C".
This is the locale setting on the affected system:

sms-svc:6> locale
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="de_DE.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=de_DE.UTF-8

The setting should look like this:

sms-svc:3> locale
LANG=C
LC_CTYPE="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_ALL=

Even though the SC is installed with the correct locale, logging into the SC from a system with a different locale setting may cause the administrator to run under that setting and will cause "showboards" to behave unexpectedly.

To make sure the SMS commands run with the expected locale value, you can set environment variable LC_ALL to "C" in the following ways:
- at the commandline, run "setenv LC_ALL C" , to set LC_ALL to the proper value for running SMS commands ;
- edit the file ".login" in the administrator's home directory and add the line "setenv LC_ALL C" , to set the LC_ALL variable at login time ;
- edit the file ".cshrc" in the administrator's home directory and add the line "setenv LC_ALL C" , to set the LC_ALL variable at the start of csh ;

Relief/Workaround
Setting the locale to "C" manually will fix the issue for the running login session:

sms-svc:7> setenv LC_ALL C
sms-svc:8> locale
LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_ALL=C
sms-svc:9> showboards
Retrieving board information. Please wait.
.......
Location Pwr Type of Board Board Status Test Status Domain
-------- --- ------------- ------------ ----------- ------
SB0 On CPU Active Passed A
SB1 Unk V3CPU Assigned Failed A
SB2 Off CPU Available Unknown Isolated
SB3 On CPU Active Passed D
SB4 Off CPU Assigned Unknown E
SB5 Off CPU Assigned Unknown F
SB6 Off CPU Assigned Unknown E
SB7 Off V3CPU Assigned Unknown I
SB8 On V3CPU Available Unknown Isolated
...

Additional Information
This has been first observed and tested on System Management Services 1.6 Software.
Older revisions may be affected but are no longer supported so no testing has been done.

locale, showboards, power, sms, Unk, LANG, LC_ALL

Attachments

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