Description

All T3 and T4 systems have an internal USB 2.0 controller with an on-board USB 2.0 hub which is used to connect all USB connectors/devices. However, this presents difficulties managing USB 1.0/1.1 physical and virtual devices which run at a lower speed than USB 2.0 devices. This results in the following issues:

      - Lost keyboard characters or lost mouse control
      - Unable to start Graphical Login
      - Problems with onlining virtual devices (ie: virtual keyboard, virtual mouse, virtual CDROM, or virtual ethernet device)
      - Delayed booting
      - Random or continuous USB FMA errors 

Occurrence

This issue can occur in the following releases:

SPARC Platform

• Solaris 10 without BOTH patches 149638-03 and 147004-03
• Solaris 11.0 through 11.1.12.5.0

Notes:

1. x86, sun4u and sun4us systems are not impacted by this issue.

2. Systems are only impacted by this issue if USB 1.0/1.1 devices are used.

3. Only SPARC T3-1, SPARC T3-1B, Netra SPARC T3-1, Netra SPARC T3-1B, Netra SPARC T3-1BA, T3-2, T3-4, T4-1, Netra SPARC T4-1, Netra SPARC T4-1B, T4-2, Netra SPARC T4-2, and SPARC T4-4 systems are affected by this issue.

To determine the system type, use the following command:

      $ prtdiag | grep System
      System Configuration:  Oracle Corporation  sun4v SPARC T3-1

Symptoms

Should this issue occur, one or more of the following symptoms will be seen:

Single or repeated Warning messages similar to the following:

      WARNING: pci@400/pci@2/pci@0/pci@f/pci@0/usb@0,1/hub@1/hub@3 (hubd9): Connecting
      device on port 2 failed

      fmadm faults with msgid USB-8000-CL and USB-8000-4U
      
      # fmadm faulty -s
      --------------- ------------------------------------  --------------
      TIME            EVENT-ID                              MSG-ID         SEVERITY
      --------------- ------------------------------------  --------------
      Jul 06 16:18:42 54a69810-6af1-e7e3-a298-be61ad8f3776  USB-8000-CL    Critical
      Jul 06 21:07:49 5029f671-8ea0-693b-907c-b1640914713b  USB-8000-4U    Major

      fma ereports ereport.io.usb.epse and ereport.io.usb.nae

      # fmdump -ev
      TIME                 CLASS                                 ENA
      Sep 05 15:50:01.1087 ereport.io.usb.nae                    0x743bf0203fa00801
      Sep 05 15:51:28.4340 ereport.io.usb.nae                    0x75813ff747708001

Workaround

There is no workaround for this issue.

This issue is addressed in the following releases:

SPARC Platform

• Solaris 10 with BOTH patch 149638-03 and patch 147004-03 or later
• Solaris 11.1.13.6.0 or later

Notes:

1. 149638-03 cannot be installed without first installing 147147-26 which includes the patch 147004-04.

2. Simply installing these fix patches/SRUs does not resolve this issue. However, it is now possible to use the ehci-port-forced-to-companion tunable to force all USB sockets connected to port 2 of the USB 2.0 controller (see note 3 below), to operate at the slower USB 1.0/1.1 speed. The ehci-port-forced-to-companion tunable is set up as follows:

  Step 1:

  Add the following line:

      ehci-port-forced-to-companion = 0x2;

  to the following file:

      For Solaris 10:   /kernel/drv/ehci.conf
      For Solaris 11:   /etc/driver/drv/ehci.conf

Note: By default, '/etc/driver/drv/ehci.conf' does not exist for Solaris 11 and needs to be created maunually for the purpose of setting/managing tunables.

  Step 2:

      Reboot the system

3. All T3 and T4 series systems have USB connectors on the front and rear panels. The USB sockets that connect to port 2 of the USB 2.0 controller which will now run at the slower USB 1.0/1.1 speed are as follows (all USB 1.0/1.1 devices should be connected to these sockets):

All USB sockets on the rear of the following systems:

      T3-1, T3-1B, Netra T3-1, Netra T3-1B, Netra T3-1BA, T3-2, T4-1, Netra T4-1, Netra T4-1B, T4-2, Netra T4-2.

All USB sockets on the front of the following systems:

      T3-4, T4-4

Faster USB 2.0 devices should not use these sockets as their performance will be unnecessarily compromised. This is because as all physical and virtual devices, USB 1.0/1.1 and 2.0, devices connected to these sockets will run at the slower speed.

4. If it is required that USB 1.0/1.1 and 2.0 devices be connected to sockets not using port 2 of the USB 2.0 controller, then the fix for 17420270 (as delivered in Solaris 11.1.19.6.0 or later) must be installed, and different tunable parameters need to be set up. See <Bug 17420270> for more details.

Patches

<SUNPATCH:149638-03>, <SUNPATCH:147004-03>

History

13-Jul-2015: Document released, status is Resolved
13-Aug-2015: Added Note to Workaround section for /etc/driver/drv/ehci.conf

This issue here is actually with the hardware and it's USB 2.0 internals.
The 'fix' described by this Sun Alert is a workaround delivered via a software change.
The first attempt at this was by 15748939, but this introduced other errors
which were later corrected by 15780473.

Some of the affected systems have release notes that speak to this,
but not all. And the text that was given was not clear. This Sun Alert
seeks to address this communication issue which is still causing many
customer queries and confusion.

11.1.19.6.0 delivers the fix for 17420270. Customers wanting this fixed in S10
need to raise an SR and have it associated with an S10 sub-bug of
17420270.

Questions regarding this document should be addressed to
sunalertpublication_us_grp@oracle.com and copy the
submitter/responsible Engineer listed below.

Internal Contributor/Submitter: tejaswi.atluri@oracle.com
Internal Eng Responsible Engineer: sheshadri.vasudevan@oracle.com
Oracle Knowledge Analyst: david.mariotto@oracle.com
Internal Eng Business Unit Group: RPE, Systems
Internal Associated SRs: 3-4508109961 3-8171282451 3-4561867033 3-8321062278 3-7358232191
Internal Resolution Patches: 147004-03, 149638-03, 11.1.13.6

References

This solution has no attachment