Troubleshooting guide

Advanced System Diagnostics and Troubleshooting Guide 49
5 Diagnostics
This chapter describes how to configure and use the Extreme Advanced System Diagnostics.
This chapter contains the following sections:
• Diagnostic Test Functionality on page 49
• System Health Checks: A Diagnostics Suite on page 52
• Power On Self Test (POST) on page 56
• Runtime (On-Demand) System Diagnostics on page 57
• Automatic Packet Memory Scan (via sys-health-check) on page 60
• Per-Slot Packet Memory Scan on BlackDiamond Switches on page 67
• System (CPU and Backplane) Health Check on page 70
• Transceiver Diagnostics on page 82
• FDB Scan on page 88
Diagnostic Test Functionality
Before you use any of the ExtremeWare diagnostic tests, you must understand some of the basics about
how a given diagnostic test functions (what it does; how it does it) as well as how your use of that
diagnostic test affects the availability of the switch and the network. This section provides information
on these topics:
• Manual initiation of tests vs. automatic, proactive initiation of tests
• Invasive tests vs. non-invasive tests
• Passive tests vs. active tests
• Control path vs. data path
How Diagnostic Tests are Run
Some diagnostic tests, such as the POST, run automatically each time the switch is booted, to validate
basic system integrity. Through ExtremeWare CLI commands, you can turn the POST off, or set it to
run in either of three modes: FastPOST (faster-running, basic test sequence), normal (basic test
sequence), or extended (more thorough, but longer-running test sequence).