ESP Driver for AIX 4.3

Release Notes: AIX 4.3 ESP Driver

Release notes for version 3.14 of the ESP software for Aix 4.3 systems (on RS6000 platforms).

Installation

For Aix 4.3 systems, the software is distributed as a compressed tar image only.

The following are the installation steps from the tar image (if a previous version of the ESP software is installed, it must be removed first).

1. create a temporary directory, e.g. /usr/espx

2. cd to the temporary directory

3. extract installation image

4. extract files from installation image

5. invoke installation script

Note that after installation, the temporary directory and its contents may be removed.

After installation, the utility espcfg must be invoked to discover and configure ESPs available to the local host. The INSTALL script will query the user and will invoke espcfg if desired.

Removal

The esp software can be removed as follows:

Additional Documentation

After installation, additional ESP documentation can be found in the file /etc/eqnx/README.

Also, system manual pages are provided for esp (generic ESP information) and for the utilities espcfg, espdiag and esptty.

Components

The following are provided in the installation package:

• version 3.14 of the espx device driver for RS6000.
• versions 3.14 of the diagnostic utilities (esp, espcfg, espdiag and esptty)
• system man pages.
• installation / usage notes.

Please note that the embedded esp firmware images (espapp.img, espboot.img, espbootb.img and espbootc.img) are no longer provided with the driver installation package. The embedded images are in a separate product that can be downloaded from the Equinox website (see the “ESP Flash Components for Unix” package in the ESP section of the downloadable driver database).

Changes in 3.14:

• Added support for ESP-8 MI and ESP-16 MI models.
• Changes to support "Avocent" branding.
• Fix to espcfg to eliminate problem with clearing ARP cache after removing an ESP.

Changes in 3.13:

• Re-engineered the BUFSTAT ioctl. This eliminates a potential panic situation.
• Modified the restartesps utility so that the esps processes and gettys enabled on esp ports are also restarted. This primarily affects operation when the cfgmgr utility is invoked manually.
• Added support for ESP-4 MI models.

Changes in 3.12:

• Added support for ESP-4 models.
• Fix to the espcfg utility for configuring ESP-8 MI models. This utility would incorrectly build the esp_ports.conf file. This would primarily affect the “replace” function for ESP-8 MI units. NOTE: customers with ESP-8 MI models should check the integrity of the file /etc/eqnx/esp_port.conf prior to doing a replace. Corruptions can be corrected by removing and re-discovering the units.
• Added remote datascope capability to the espdiag utility. This allows the datascope operation to monitor serial traffic to/from an ESP even if the data is not being sent to/from the local system. Specified by a new field in the “datascope menu”.
• Added the “-m” option to the espdiag utility. This provides an alternate mechanism for specifying an ESP port. When invoked with this option, all menu items that expect an ESP port will present two fields for ESP number (01-64) and ESP port number (1-16). When invoked without this option, the same menu items will expect a device file name (such as /dev/tty01e0).

Changes in 3.10:

• Added new esp model - ESP2-opto.
• Reduced unnecessary delay time when closing ports from 5 seconds to 200 microseconds. This only affects ports that have HUPCL set.

Changes in 3.09:

• Modified the driver installation procedure so that tty attributes are properly maintained. Previously the attributes would only be restored after a system reboot was done.

Changes in 3.08:

• Modified the esp utility so that it closes all files inherited from its parent process.
• Added the ability to configure the UDP timeout value using the espcfg utility. A timeout occurs if the amount of time since a UDP "heartbeat" message has been received exceeds the timeout value. When the timeout occurs, the connection between server and ESP is severed. By default, the timeout value is 60 seconds. On some WANs, it may be desirable to increase this value.
• Fix to the espcfg utility so that the "one-port option" is provided when manually adding an ESP-2 MI that was not discovered.
• Fix to the espcfg utility so that the "one-port option" is preserved when replacing an ESP-2 MI.
• Fix to the espdiag utility so that framing errors do not occur when shutting down the loopback function.
• Fix to the espdiag utility so that the display updates correctly when running loopback at very low baudrates.

Changes in 3.07d:

• In 3.07b, the driver was changed to timeout the drain operation done before closing a port at 30 seconds. This was found to be insufficient time to allow all data to be drained in some circumstances (i.e. printers at low baudrates). The timeout has been removed, hence the driver will wait until all data has been drained before proceeding with the close. Note that this is the same functionality as in release 3.06 and 3.07.

Changes in 3.07b:

• Timer related operations in the driver were causing occasional system panics. Driver changes were made to use kernel timer functions as (verbally) documented by IBM.

Changes in 3.07:

• Provides support for ESP-2 MI.
• The embedded esp firmware images (espapp.img, espboot.img, espbootb.img and espbootc.img) are no longer provided with the driver installation package. The embedded images are in a separate product that can be downloaded from the Equinox website (see the "ESP Flash Components for Unix" package in the ESP section of the downloadable driver database).
• The espgetnet utility used by esp/espcfg would fail if there was a configured network interface that was not operational. The utility now accounts for this.
• Fix for install failure for the man pages on AIX 5.1 systems. Previously, the man pages would not get installed properly if the directory where they would be located at did not exist.
• Clarified the operation of the espcfg utility when a "Replace" fails. Previously, this would display a screen with the "Finish" button. Clicking on finish would cause the failed operation to be redone. Now, the screen has an "Ok" button, which when selected, returns to the main menu.
• The espcfg utility only shows 6 esps at a time on most display screens. If there are more than 6, the screen provides a scroll mechanism. This scroll functionality did not work properly (for example, the discovery screen would scroll the MAC address column but not the IP address column). Furthermore, additional screens would have garbled displays after using the scroll mechanism. Corrected.
• The espcfg utility would core dump if a discovery was done on an ESP-8MI unit and the discovery was by specifying the IP address of the unit.
  

Changes in 3.06:

• The replace function in espcfg failed in the case where the ESP unit to be replaced had already been removed from the system and the replacement unit was installed at the same IP address as the previous unit.

• The espcfg utility was not correctly validating the gateway address when an ESP being installed was on the local network.
• Fixed various retries that were not being done properly in espcfg.
• Closed driver holes that could account for a problem where the driver thought a port was closed, but the ESP thought it was open.
• When a network disconnection/reconnection occurs, ports that are open and have CLOCAL set in the termios structure were not getting properly restored. This could lead to hung terminals.
• Fix to espcfg to handle longer lines in esp.conf. Typical 10/100 units with a configured gateway would not be parsed correctly - espcfg would report these as ESPs of type "Unknown". Several functions within espcfg would not work correctly in this case.
• Provides support for Aix 5.1 - packaged as both tar image and RPM package.
• There were also several changes to the embedded application and BIOS/bootstrap images:

Changes to ESP Embedded Application Version 3.04

• Corrected a problem that will cause the ESP 10/100 and ESP-MI to reboot when memory resources are low and an Ethernet packet cannot be read from the Ethernet chip. The error would cause the ESP firmware to watchdog timeout, forcing the reboot. The error can occur in either 10MB or 100MB mode. This problem does not affect the older 10MB model ESP.
• The ESP has been corrected to operate serial ports correctly at 2400 baud. The Baud rate was not correctly set causing framing errors when data was received on an ESP serial port at 2400 Baud.

Changes in BIOS/bootstrap release 3.61:

• Corrected a problem with switches that use the spanning tree algorithm. Customers report that these switches block transmission of Ethernet packets from devices that establish LINK with the switch. From the time that LINK is established, the switch will block transmission of Ethernet packets for up to 30 seconds. As such, BOOTP request for IP address and TFTP requests for flash update will fail. This is because these are tried for less than 30 seconds. Because Ethernet packets transmitted to the switch are discarded, the BOOTP and TFTP requests never reach the intended server. The correction is to BOOTP for up to 45 seconds and to TFTP up to 45 seconds before declaring a failure. This will elongate ESP and CPS initialization time, but is the only way to solve this problem.

Changes in 3.05

• Added datascope facility to espdiag. The functionality is similar to the datascope facility available with the equinox sst drivers. This allows all transmitted data, received data or both for a specified port to be captured in a large circular buffer. The data is displayed as it is captured and can also be reviewed later.
• Provided a fix for the problem where the esps were not being initialized properly after a reboot. The script to do this (/etc/eqnx/rc.espx) is now invoked by an inittab action.
• Removed legacy code in the esp process that would recognize the environment variables RTCPCONF and RTCPLOG. This program would behave incorrectly if those environment variables were set.
• Provided a fix for the problem where smit would not recognize esp ports on some systems.
• Provided a fix for the problem where esp ports were not available after re-configuration using espcfg or after product removal and re-installation. This was generally due to the devices not being properly eliminated on a removal.
• Added an additional logging feature. The log file /var/msgs/espxcfg-log will contain a log of the configuration methods invoked and the results. This logfile is re-created on each boot.