Blackbird/Firmware/2.00/Release Notes

System Package 2.00 Release Notes

BMC

• Our standard ATX products (this includes Talos II and Blackbird) now ship with an easy to use Web GUI installed on the BMC.
  • Full support for serial console interaction, iKVM, and remote media is added with this firmware version
  • A recent Web browser, such as Ungoogled Chromium for POWER (https://github.com/leo-lb/ungoogled-chromium) is required due to the use of modern Web features. No closed source or proprietary plugins are required to use any of the BMC Web GUI features.
  • Earlier methods of interacting with the BMC, including firmware updates over SSH, will continue to be supported across all product lines as they are efficient at scale in larger deployments. The Web GUI is just another way of interacting with the BMC, targeted at individual users and SME.
  • The login credentials for SSH and the Web GUI are shared -- changing one will change the other. This makes it easy to change your BMC root password from a Web browser on a second computer if required.
  • The Web server will not respond to http:// requests. You must access it via https:// only.

• After upgrading from any system firmware package version before 2.00, spurious entries left over from previous firmware versions may show up in the system inventory. You can clear these from the BMC command line, with chassis power off as follows:
  rm -rf /var/lib/phosphor-inventory-manager/xyz/openbmc_project/inventory/system/chassis
reboot
  When the BMC starts back up and the system is powered back on, the inventory will re-populate with correct data.

PNOR

• Supports DD2.3 ("v2") CPUs
• Supports Ultravisor
• Memory VPD updated to improve compatibility with third party RAM DIMMs
• AMD Navi GPU support (with proprietary AMD GPU firmware added to BOOTKERNFW partition)

Known Issues

• New BMC cannot IPL old PNOR and vice versa (CANTFIX)
• Lockdown of P2A bridge for security breaks AST2500 VGA passthrough -- ast driver in guest cannot read configuration due to lockdown, and qemu does not pass host device tree information with VGA configuration data to guest kernel.
• Certain DIMMs may not function in Slot 0. This is not a defect in the Blackbird planar, it is a memory VPD issue that is being worked by Raptor and the IBM memory team. Future firmware updates are expected to address this problem.
• Upgrading from a BMC that has been manually edited to add or remove users can result in loss of SSH access after the upgrade has completed. The root cause is that /etc/passwd is retained verbatim across updates if modified, and as a result the new sshd user is not present in the upgraded firmware environment.
  • Prior to upgrading such a BMC, the following line should be added to /etc/passwd on the BMC:
    sshd:x:996:995::/var/run/sshd:/bin/false
  • Alternatively, the files /etc/passwd and /etc/group can be removed immediately before reboot to apply the update. Caution should be used with this method, as failure to apply the update could then result in a requirement to use a BMC serial cable or external SPI flasher to recover.
• Systems with LSI SAS controllers (mpt3sas kernel module) crash in petitboot and are unable to boot the target OS
  • WORKAROUND: Use our current 2.01 Beta PNOR instead of the 2.00 release PNOR