Sun Ultra 20 and Sun Fire X2100 With Specific Configurations May Experience "Silent Data Corruption"

Asset ID:	1-77-1001018.1
Update Date:	2011-02-25
Keywords:

Solution Type Sun Alert Sure

Solution 1001018.1 : Sun Ultra 20 and Sun Fire X2100 With Specific Configurations May Experience "Silent Data Corruption"

Related Items


Sun Ultra 20 Workstation
 Sun Fire X2100 Server

Related Categories


GCS>Sun Microsystems>Sun Alert>Criteria Category>Data Loss
 GCS>Sun Microsystems>Sun Alert>Release Phase>Resolved

PreviouslyPublishedAs
201344

Product
Sun Fire X2100 Server
Sun Ultra 20 Workstation

Bug Id
<SUNBUG: 6505640>

Date of Workaround Release
01-FEB-2007

Date of Resolved Release
07-JUN-2007

Impact

On Sun Ultra 20 and Sun Fire X2100 systems with Opteron RevE CPU running Linux Operating Systems and configured with at least 4 GB unbuffered memory (or more), a "silent data corruption" issue may occur.

Contributing Factors

This issue can occur on the following platforms:

Sun Ultra 20 without BIOS version 2.2.9
Sun Fire X2100 without BIOS version 1.1.7

with the following configuration:

Opteron RevE CPU
4GB (or more) unbuffered memory
running any Linux Distribution like RHEL, SuSE etc.

Note: Systems with 1GB or 2GB unbuffered memory, and other Operating Systems (i.e. Sun Solaris) are not known to be affected by this issue.

Symptoms

The data corruption is typically a 4K block that is completely "nulled out", and sometimes random data are inside this 4K block. This may happen randomly to any files of any size, and there is no indication that data corruption has occurred.

Workaround

To work around the described issue, add the kernel parameter "iommu=soft" to the kernel command line in the grub boot loader configuration "/boot/grub/grub.conf".

Note: Allowing the Linux Kernel to do the software bounce buffering has a performance hit of 15% to 20% for I/O operations.

Resolution

This issue is addressed on the following platforms:

Sun Ultra 20 with BIOS version 2.2.9 or later
Sun Fire X2100 with BIOS version 1.1.7 or later

The BIOS versions can be upgraded from the "Tools & Drivers" CD V1.7, available for download at:

For Ultra 20:

http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/ultra20/downloads.jsp

For Sun Fire X2100:

http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x2100/downloads.jsp

Modification History
Date: 07-JUN-2007

Updated Contributing Factors and Resolution sections
State: Resolved

Previously Published As
102790
Internal Comments

Internal Contributor/submitter
[email protected]

Internal Eng Business Unit Group
SSG WGS (Workgroup Systems)

Internal Eng Responsible Engineer
[email protected]

Internal Services Knowledge Engineer
[email protected]

Internal Escalation ID
1-20850221

Internal Sun Alert Kasp Legacy ID
102790

Internal Sun Alert & FAB Admin Info
Critical Category: Data Loss
Significant Change Date: 2007-02-01, 2007-06-07
Avoidance: Upgrade
Responsible Manager: [email protected]
Original Admin Info: [WF 01-Feb-2007, dave m: send for release]
[Resubmitted 29-Jan-2007, dave m: redraft issue]
[WF 26-Jan-2007, dave m: draft created, sending for review]

Product_uuid
28c0502a-fd60-11d9-a8ca-080020a9ed93|Sun Fire X2100 Server
372415be-961d-11d9-9adf-080020a9ed93|Sun Ultra 20 Workstation

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