On Sun Fire 3800/4800/4810/6800, V1280, and Netra 1280 Domains, Time of Day (TOD) May Drift or Jump

Product
Sun Fire 3800 Server
Sun Fire 4800 Server
Sun Fire 4810 Server
Sun Fire 6800 Server
Sun Fire V1280 Server
Netra 1280 Server

Bug Id
SUNBUG: 4876369

Date of Workaround Release
10-SEP-2003

Date of Resolved Release
04-NOV-2003

Impact

On very rare occasions, the Time of Day (TOD) on Sun Fire 3800/4800/4810/6800, V1280, and Netra 1280 domains may be susceptible to a clock drift or jump. As a result, any functionality that relies upon the System Controller (SC) timer may be inaccurate.

Contributing Factors

This issue can occur in the following releases:

SPARC Platform

* Sun Fire V1280 and Netra 1280 with firmware (ScApp) 5.13.0014 or earlier
* Sun Fire 3800/4800/4810/6800 with firmware (ScApp) 5.12.x
* Sun Fire 3800/4800/4810/6800 with firmware (ScApp) 5.13.x
* Sun Fire 3800/4800/4810/6800 with firmware (ScApp) 5.14.x
* Sun Fire 3800/4800/4810/6800 with firmware (ScApp) 5.15.0, 5.15.1 and 5.15.2

Note: Systems with firmware 5.11.x are not affected by this issue. Use the "showsc -v" command to display the firmware version of the SC.

Symptoms

This issue may occur after 528 days of SC continuous uptime, where the TOD within a domain in the system may become random and unstable. The intervals reported have varied, but the behavior is generally that the TOD jumps backwards approximately one hour up to as much as one month. The TOD as seen by the SC itself does not jump.

There are no specific messages that would indicate this issue has occurred. It can only be discovered by the domain exhibiting unexpected behavior due to the domain TOD changing unexpectedly.

Resolution

This issue is addressed in the following releases:

* Sun Fire V1280 and Netra 1280 with firmware (ScApp) 5.13.0015 (as delivered in patch 113751-05 or later)
* Sun Fire 3800/4800/4810/6800 with firmware (ScApp) 5.15.3 (as delivered in patch 112884-04 or later)

Note: The patch must be added to both system controllers to remedy this issue.