[OpenPower-Firmware] How risky is uploading self-compiled PNOR for Habanero?

[Samuel Mendoza-Jonas]

On Mon, 2016-11-21 at 14:51 +0000, Werner Fischer wrote:
> I'm testing a Habanero System from TYAN (the ...-4T-3 model [1]).
> 
> I have now compiled a PNOR for this server on my x86_64 Ubuntu 14.04
> laptop. For this I did:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> $ git clone --recursive https://github.com/open-power/op-build.git
> $ cd op-build
> $ . op-build-env
> $ op-build habanero_defconfig
> $ op-build
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> The process finished successfully as you can see in the console output:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> [...]
> /usr/bin/install /home/wfischer/git/op-build/output/host/usr/powerpc64le-buildroot-linux-gnu/sysroot/pnor/"habanero.pnor" /home/wfischer/git/op-build/output/images
> # if this config has an UPDATE_FILENAME defined, create a 32M (1/2 size)
> # image that only updates the non-golden side
> if [ ""habanero_update.pnor"" != "" ]; then dd if=/home/wfischer/git/op-build/output/host/usr/powerpc64le-buildroot-linux-gnu/sysroot/pnor/"habanero.pnor" of=/home/wfischer/git/op-build/output/host/usr/powerpc64le-buildroot-linux-gnu/sysroot/pnor/"habanero_update.pnor" bs=32M count=1; /usr/bin/install /home/wfischer/git/op-build/output/host/usr/powerpc64le-buildroot-linux-gnu/sysroot/pnor/"habanero_update.pnor" /home/wfischer/git/op-build/output/images; fi
> 1+0 records in
> 1+0 records out
> 33554432 bytes (34 MB) copied, 0,11827 s, 284 MB/s
> make: Leaving directory `/home/wfischer/git/op-build/buildroot'
> wfischer at tpw:~/git/op-build$ 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> My question now is: how dangerous is it to upload this PNOR to the
> server instead of uploading the official PNOR from TYAN? I'm rather
> confident that it should work, and I also think that in case that the
> PNOR does not work it should be possible to upload the offical TYAN PNOR
> again as described in this blog post [2], but I also do not want to
> break the server. So I'd be thankful for any field reports of people who
> did this on such a TYAN system.

Hi,

Flashing a new PNOR is pretty safe, Jeremy describes how to do it using the
pflash utility on the BMC (search for 'pflash') here:
http://jk.ozlabs.org/blog/post/159/customising-openpower-firmware/

Assuming you back up the original PNOR (with pflash -r ..) you should be able
to return to your original firmware easily.

As for assembling a .hpm file I don't know, can anyone else weigh in on the
format of those?
If you *can* get a .hpm file that may be a lot easier however than messing
with pflash flags.

Cheers,
Sam

> 
> Best regards,
> Werner
> 
> [1] http://www.tyan.com/Barebones_TN71-BP012_BSP012T71V14HR-4T-3
> [2] http://mitacfae.blogspot.co.at/2016/05/how-to-upgrade-bp012-bmc-and-pnor-to.html
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