Specifications

System Software Diagnostics Guide — September 2006 85
17
17.DM3post Reference
This chapter provides reference information about the DM3post tool. The following topics are
included:
• Description. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
• Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
• Options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
A procedure for using this tool is provided in Section 4.2, “Checking an Individual Board”, on page
27.
17.1 Description
The DM3post tool, sometimes referred to as “POST-on-demand”, can perform diagnostics on a
stopped board at any time to detect and isolate possible hardware faults.
Note: This tool can be run on Intel NetStructure
®
on DM3 architecture boards and Intel NetStructure
®
IPT Series boards.
17.2 Guidelines
The board must be in a “stopped” state before the DM3post tool can be run. If you do not use the
reset option (
-r), DM3post will not reset the board and will only retrieve the POST results for the
last reset that occurred. If you use DM3post with the reset option, DM3post will force a full reset of
the specified board, forcing the Control Processor (CP) POST diagnostics to run. DM3post will
then retrieve the POST results from the SRAM and provide a PASS/FAIL indication to you. The
board will remain in a stopped state, so you must restart the board.
DM3post also provides an option to run POST on a chassis level. By using the chassis option (
-c),
DM3post will retrieve the results of the last run POST for all DM3 boards in the chassis. By using
the chassis option with the reset option, you can run POST on all DM3 boards in the system. When
using the chassis option, it is not necessary to provide the bus and slot numbers. Any option other
than the reset option will be ignored when using the chassis option. In addition to output on the
screen, more detailed output is logged to a log file, dm3post.log, by default.
Notes: 1. Signal Processors (SP) are not diagnosed by DM3post. However, SP health is verified as part of
the board’s download process. Therefore sufficient diagnostic coverage for hardware is obtained
when a board passes POST and is successfully downloaded.
2. On Windows systems, for For the slot number (-s option), provide the PCI slot number. This
information may be obtained from the Configuration Manager (DCM), which is described in the
Configuration Guides for the release. On Linux systems, for the slot number, provide the
physical slot number. This information may be obtained from the listboards utility, which is
described in the Administration Guide for the release.