dell server BIOS setting insanity

[Ward Vandewege]

Hi all,

I thought I'd point out this little gem from the linux-poweredge list

http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2010-January/041170.html

Apparently several lines of Dell servers have a BIOS setting called
"Cores-per-processor".

It seems they ship these machines with the setting configured to 'dual',
regardless of what CPUs are in the system.

The poor guy who reported this to the list just took delivery of 300 of those
machines - with quad core CPUs. They show up as dual core until he goes into
the BIOS and changes the setting. That's also the 'official' solution for the
problem from the Dell rep.

Seriously.

Thanks,
Ward.

[Peter Stuge]

Ward Vandewege wrote:
> 300 of those machines - with quad core CPUs. They show up as dual
> core until he goes into the BIOS and changes the setting. That's
> also the 'official' solution for the problem from the Dell rep.

Ask him to come to IRC. If really lucky it will be faster to create a
program for it. But my guess is that it will be quicker to walk
around and change the setting.

//Peter

[Stefan Reinauer]

On 2/1/10 5:51 AM, Peter Stuge wrote:
> Ward Vandewege wrote:
> > 300 of those machines - with quad core CPUs. They show up as dual
> > core until he goes into the BIOS and changes the setting. That's
> > also the 'official' solution for the problem from the Dell rep.
>
> Ask him to come to IRC. If really lucky it will be faster to create a
> program for it. But my guess is that it will be quicker to walk
> around and change the setting.

That program might already exist: nvramtool

Usage: nvramtool [-y LAYOUT_FILE | -t] PARAMETER ...
[..]
-b OUTPUT_FILE: Dump CMOS memory contents to file.
-B INPUT_FILE: Write file contents to CMOS memory.
-x: Show hex dump of CMOS memory.
-X DUMPFILE: Show hex dump of CMOS dumpfile.
[..]

Change the setting on one machine, dump CMOS to a file, and write that
CMOS file back on the other machines.

Stefan

[Carl-Daniel Hailfinger]

On 01.02.2010 04:44, Ward Vandewege wrote:
> I thought I'd point out this little gem from the linux-poweredge list
>
> http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2010-January/041170.html
>
> Apparently several lines of Dell servers have a BIOS setting called
> "Cores-per-processor".
>
> It seems they ship these machines with the setting configured to 'dual',
> regardless of what CPUs are in the system.
>
> The poor guy who reported this to the list just took delivery of 300 of those
> machines - with quad core CPUs. They show up as dual core until he goes into
> the BIOS and changes the setting. That's also the 'official' solution for the
> problem from the Dell rep.
>
> Seriously.

You must be kidding. I mean, if Dell declare this to be a "feature",
they could go all the way to set the CPUs to single-core.
Poor users.

I envision a new option in Dell order forms: "Apply correct BIOS
settings. $25"

Anyway, could you ask the guy to dump with nvramtool before and after
the settings change? Maybe the settings live in NVRAM. That would make
it scriptable.

Regards,
Carl-Daniel

[ron minnich]

Do you know if it is in CMOS or FLASH? I could not tell.

If in CMOS it's trivial to script and they're going to want that
script, because in the typical factory BIOS these settings have a way
of "reverting to default", which is why we once had 4600 nodes come up
and want a keyboard to be attached; they forgot that we'd told them
there were no keyboards.  ... and those are hardly the only nodes
we've seen the problem on over the last 10 years.

ron