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Important notices to read before installing Linux on IBM Power Systems

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The following links contain urgent and timely information that could help you avoid problems during the installation of Linux on IBM systems.

Read these importance notices before you begin your install.

This site is reserved for this type of urgent information. So, please bookmark this page for future reference.

Read before installing Linux on IBM systems
Date Abstract
09/28/2018 Possibility of system crash when DLPAR removing memory after partition migration or Dynamic Platform Optimization
09/28/2018 When booting LPARs with large amounts of CPU and memory assigned, the system may time-out and stop in "emergency mode"
08/16/2018 PCIe3 2-PORT 25/10 Gb NIC & RoCE SFP28 Adapter (EC2T / EC2U) issue on Power 9 systems
08/16/2018 Mellanox mlx5 driver fails to load on Power 9 systems with more than 240 SMT threads
07/11/2017 Disk Hot Swap in IBM Power 5107-084 Disk Drawer
09/12/2016 Linux support on 8001-12C and 8001-22C
09/12/2016 SMT disable may cause hang with NVMe Flash Adapters and devices
05/25/2016 The Linux device driver for the PCIe3 1.6TB/3.2TB NVMe Flash Adapters for IBM POWER8 Servers does not currently support handling Enhanced Error Handling (EEH) errors. If an EEH error occurs, the LPAR may experience a kernel panic ("Oops: Kernel access of bad area").
05/25/2016 Under heavy I/O load, in certain system configurations, "iommu_alloc failed" messages may be seen in the dmesg log
05/04/2016 For POWER8 servers with Firmware level FW830.10 (SV830_068), depending on the user's setup, user might experience boot failure after an upgrade from RHEL7.1 to RHEL 7.2.
06/03/2015 When Integrity Measurement Architecture (IMA) and Virtual Trusted Platform Module (VTPM) are both enabled, the system hangs during bootup on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12.
06/03/2015 When processing a Dynamic Platform Optimization (DPO) event or Virtual Private Home Node (VPHN) update, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 installations on PowerVM LPARs can experience a kernel panic ("Oops: Kernel access of bad area").
06/03/2015 Customers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 (little endian), or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 on an IBM POWER8 server should be aware that PowerVM LPAR support was not initially available on these Linux offerings when shipped.
05/21/2013 In very rare circumstances while running the NFS client, data read may be corrupted (zeros instead of actual data) on older versions of Linux when an NFS server responds with less data than requested (ie. "short reads").
04/08/2013 Customers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 or SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 2 with the be2net 4.4.98.22 driver update available from SUSE will find that the second 1Gb port on the "Dual 10Gb Copper + Dual 1Gb Ethernet" integrated ethernet adapter (FC 1768, FC 1769) does not operate correctly.
03/20/2013 PCIe2 4-port (2 10GbE+2 1GbE) FCoE+NIC CNA (Feature Codes: EN0H, EN0J, EL38) and PCIe2 2-port (2 10GbE) Integrated FcoE+NIC CNA Adapter (Feature Codes: EN10, EN11) Adapters for IBM POWER7 Servers
03/20/2013 PCIe2 16Gb 2-Port Fibre Channel Adapter for IBM POWER7 Servers (Feature Codes: EN0A, EN0B)
02/28/2013 The IBM Flex System CN4058 Mezzanine Converged Network Adapter will not operate properly for network (NIC) traffic or Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FcoE) traffic on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 2 systems without an update of the be2net and lpfc drivers
05/22/2012 Important: Ethernet adapter support with PowerLinux 7R2
05/04/2012 PCIe2 4-port 1Gb Ethernet Adapter (FC EL11/5260/5899) may fail configuration with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.2 on IBM Power 7 systems
03/22/2012 Updated information: Required Linux driver update for selected POWER7 servers and adapters
11/14/2011 RHEL 6.1: Configuration issues for PCI-Express adapters on some POWER7 servers
08/11/2011 Updated information: Linux bnx2i module may disable Broadcom 1GB Ethernet adapters on Power servers
05/23/2011 Updated information: Running CIFS Client for Linux may result in unreported data inconsistencies (Previous update: 01/15/2009)
09/29/2010 Possibility of data corruption with 10GB Ethernet adapter failure
09/17/2010 Extended Boot Times for IBM Power 795 with greater than 2 Terabytes of memory
08/17/2010 Updated information: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) support for IBM Power Systems with POWER7 processors.
07/09/2010 Latest updated information: QLogic Ethernet and 4 Gigabit Fibre Channel Expansion Cards in BladeCenter PS700 and PS701/702 blades running Linux RHEL5.5. Fix now available on Red Hat Enterprise Network.
06/29/2010 Latest updated information: IBM has identified a problem with the SLES 11 and SLES 10 SP3 device drivers for 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapters. Fixes from Novell are now available on the Novell maintenance web site.
07/22/2008 Attention: Infiniband Code Downloads for IBM Power Systems are now available for SLES 10 SP2
07/16/2008 IBM POWER6 processor-based servers or IBM BladeCenter JS20 and JS21 running applications compiled as 64-bit applications using VMX registers on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5 or 4.6 may experience values for the registers being changed when returning from a signal.
02/20/2006 IBM System p5 185 and IBM Intellistation 185 without a graphics adapter requires additional configuration to install RHEL4 U3 using a serial console.
02/20/2006 IBM System p5 185 and IBM Intellistation 185 without a graphics adapter requires additional configuration to install SLES9 SP3 using a serial console.
06/17/2005 JS20: SLES9 install to Fibre Channel disk fails to boot
06/17/2005 IBM Power Systems configured with root file system on a software RAID device fail SLES9-SP1 install

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