Archive for June, 2011

Fixing B155B071 errors on power systems

Sunday, June 26th, 2011

I recently got my hands on a couple of Power5 servers. IBM 9110-510 and 9110-51a to be precise. When powered up, one of them gave an unrecoverable error – B155B071 and halted. You can then power on the server again and it will continue.

Being new to all this power stuff, it took me a couple of hours to figure out what was wrong and how to fix the problem. Amongst IBMs many good pages about the power tech, you will find on titled “(B1xx) Service processor firmware reference code descriptions“. On that page you can read that B155B071 means “Invalid/Un-Programmed Serial Number in Enclosure”.

To fix that, connect to you power system using the ASMI and then

  • Power down you power server.
  • Expand the system configuration list
  • Expand the program Vital Product Data list
  • Click on “System Enclosure”
  • Put in a serial number for the system enclosure. A serial number that is different from the serial number of the server!
  • The service processor will reboot

You should now be able to boot your power server without any B155B071 standing in your way.