Computer system failure reporting mechanism

A mechanism is provided for a failed computer system to send a report of the failure to a remote site without dependency on a service processor or maintenance processor. The computer system is capable of reporting system failure to a remote site independent of whether the system may be successfully rebooted. The system includes a CPU, and, coupled to the CPU, a non-volatile control store, a main memory, a storage device storing a computer operating system, and a data modem. Firmware is resident in the non-volatile control store of the main computer system for reporting system failure to a remote site independent of whether the system may be successfully rebooted by reloading the operating system into main memory. The firmware is invoked upon occurrence of a non-recoverable error and provides for assembling failure-related information, establishing communication with the remote site, and transmitting the failure-related information to the remote site.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
 1. Field of the Invention
 The present invention relates to computer system maintenance and
 diagnostics and more particularly to computer system failure reporting
 mechanisms for reporting system failure to a remote site.
 2. State of the Art
 Much of the world's day-to-day business relies on sophisticated computer
 systems used in such fields as finance, securities exchange,
 telecommunications, medicine, and retailing. Reliability and
 maintainability are vital concerns in such applications, since any down
 time may result not only in tremendous inconvenience but also significant
 monetary loss. Vendors of such computer systems have therefore developed
 maintenance and diagnostic facilities as part of the computer system and
 have established customer assistance centers to provide customer support.
 When a system failure occurs, diagnostic software tries to determine the
 cause of the failure and sends analysis results to the customer assistance
 center. In the prior art, reporting mechanisms of the type described have
 typically been required to run under the computer operating system, such
 that if a failure occurs, the system must be able to be successfully
 rebooted before failure reporting can be performed. To ensure that the
 system can be successfully rebooted, redundant boot paths have been
 provided. That is, multiple independent copies of the operating system
 have been stored on different storage devices independently accessible by
 the computer system such that if the operating system cannot be reloaded
 from one of the storage devices, then it may hopefully be reloaded from
 another of the storage devices. Despite such precautions, failures do
 occur that prevent the system from being successfully rebooted. In order
 to minimize down time, a mechanism is needed for reporting such failures.
 Such a mechanism would allow a "dead" system to "call home"; that is,
 allow a system that cannot be successfully rebooted to send a report to a
 remote service center.
 SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
 The present invention, generally speaking, provides a mechanism for a
 failed computer system to send a report of the failure to a remote site.
 The computer system is capable of reporting system failure to a remote
 site independent of whether the system may be successfully rebooted. The
 system includes a CPU, and, coupled to the CPU, a non-volatile control
 store, a main memory, a storage device storing a computer operating
 system, and a data modem. Firmware is resident in the non-volatile control
 store for reporting system failure to a remote site independent of whether
 the system may be successfully rebooted by reloading the operating system
 into main memory. The firmware is invoked upon occurrence of a
 non-recoverable error and provides for assembling failure-related
 information, establishing communication with the remote site, and
 transmitting the failure-related information to the remote site.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS
 Referring now to FIG. 1, in a typical configuration of a computer of the
 type described, multiple CPUs and multiple memory modules are connected to
 a common bus. Also connected to the bus are I/O devices. The system may
 also include a system support processor (SSP). In the configuration as
 shown, each CPU is assumed to be equipped with a modem and with its own
 file storage device for storing a copy of the operating system.
 Referring now to FIG. 2, reporting flow according to an exemplary
 embodiment of the invention will be described. It should be understood,
 however, that other reporting flows may be used to suit the needs of a
 particular system or user, the common feature among such various reporting
 flows being that a failure report may be sent via modem to a remote site
 independent of whether the system is able to be rebooted.
 In step 1 of FIG. 2, the system is assumed to have been booted and to be
 successfully running UNIX (or some other computer operating system) at the
 time of occurrence of a system crash. By system crash is meant the
 occurrence of an unrecoverable error requiring return of the system to a
 known initial state, i.e., rebooting. When an unrecoverable error is
 detected, a Logout Auto Reboot (LAR) firmware routine stored in PROM
 within each CPU is invoked. Logout provides a graceful way of bringing the
 system down and placing it in a state to be brought up. For example,
 during Logout, hardware and software state information is collected,
 including information regarding possible faults. After Logout has been
 performed, Logout results are analyzed to determine the cause of failure,
 and the system is reconfigured if possible to remove the failed device
 from the system. For example, a CPU board might fail, in which case the
 system would be reconfigured to remove the failed CPU board from the
 system.
 Rather than automatically generating a report to the remote site upon each
 failure occurrence, the user is able to specify with some particularity
 under what circumstances a report should be generated. As shown in step 2,
 the user may specify that crashes are not to be reported (rpt_crash=0) or
 that each crash after a specific number of crashes (crash_cnt) is to be
 reported (rpt_crash=1). If crashes are to be reported and the crash count
 has been reached, then a report is generated and sent via modem in step 5.
 If crashes are not to be reported or the crash count has not been reached,
 then the reporting flow passes to step 3. In similar manner as with
 crashes, the user may specify whether reconfiguration is to be reported.
 If reconfiguration is performed and a rpt_config flag is set, then a
 report is generated and sent via modem to the remote site. Otherwise, the
 reporting flow passes to step 4. Rather than reporting each
 reconfiguration, the user may specify that a report is to be generated and
 sent via modem only when a minimum system configuration has been reached.
 If the minimum configuration has been reached and the rpt_min flag is set,
 then a report is generated and sent via modem. Otherwise, a reboot process
 is begun. If a failure report is to be generated and sent in accordance
 with any of the foregoing decisions, the report is first generated and
 sent and then a reboot process is entered. The decision steps described
 may be modified or arranged in different sequences.
 When reboot is attempted following the previously described steps, if the
 system cannot be successfully rebooted, then the system is "dead", i.e.,
 inoperable. In the prior art, a dead system has been unable to "call home"
 (i.e., send a failure report via modem) because generation and
 transmission of the failure report has required use of the operating
 system. In the presently described system, on the other hand, the LAR
 firmware is resident in PROM and may be executed independently of whether
 the system may be rebooted. In similar manner as previously described, the
 user may specify whether or not a dead system is to be reported (step 6).
 If so, a report is generated and sent via modem (step 7). Otherwise, the
 reporting flow is complete.
 FIG. 3 illustrates in greater detail the reporting sequence. First, a list
 is built of files to be transmitted. In a preferred embodiment, the files
 transmitted include a LAR customer specification file, a LAR history file,
 and a Logout file. In general, the LAR customer specification file
 specifies when, how and under what circumstances reboot is to be
 performed. For example, the LAR customer specification file stores
 information concerning the minimum system configuration with which reboot
 will be attempted. The LAR history file contains bit maps specifying what
 resources are present in the system, which of the resources have been
 disabled and which of the resources have been determined to be bad. The
 file also specifies a particular boot path used in the reboot attempt. The
 Logout file contains various configuration and status information
 collected from system hardware and software resources.
 In a user specification for remote reporting, a pre-defined,
 user-configurable structure including various flags and variables is
 stored. Information stored in the user specification includes, in addition
 to the conditions under which a report is to be generated, described
 previously, information concerning a primary remote site to which the
 report is to be sent and a secondary remote site to which the report is to
 be sent if the primary site cannot be reached for some reason. Also
 included is information specifying the appropriate modem parameters to be
 used. These parameters are user configurable, allowing for international
 remote reporting. After the list of files for transmission has been built,
 connection to the primary site is then attempted. If the connection
 attempt is unsuccessful, then connection to the secondary site is then
 attempted. If this connection attempt is also unsuccessful, then an
 appropriate error message is returned. Phone numbers and other information
 concerning the primary and secondary sites is included in the user
 specification for remote reporting.
 Assuming connection to either the primary or secondary site is successfully
 achieved, then a report directory is created. When a report is sent to the
 host, it will be saved under a directory structure as follows:

.circle-solid. .about./rmt_rpt/System_name/
 .circle-solid. Report_name1/
 .circle-solid. Report_files
 .circle-solid. Report_name2/
 .circle-solid. Report_files
 The value of System_name is specified in the configuration file. The value
 of Report_name may be the date and time of the report.
 The receive and transmit functions are then initiated. The system transmits
 to the remote site the files listed in the list of files for transmission.
 Alternatively only notification of the failure may be sent to the remote
 site, after which the remote site may dial back in to collect specific
 desired files. Or, in the case of a secure site that cannot be dialled
 into reporting may be achieved by communication via pager. In the latter
 case, the modem simply dials a pager number, thereby notifying the
 responsible party that a failure has occurred.
 If an error occurs during transfer, an appropriate error message is
 returned. Otherwise, a decision is made whether to invoke an analysis
 option in which the local system performs limited analysis of Logout data
 in an attempt to determine the cause of the system failure. Whether or not
 analysis is invoked may be specified in the user specification for remote
 reporting. More extensive analysis may be performed at the remote site
 once a report has been sent.
 If analysis is invoked and the fault is detected, a report detaining the
 fault and a possible solution may be E-mailed to the group responsible for
 system support of the remote site. Whether an E-mail message is sent may
 be specified in the user specification for remote reporting. Even if
 analysis is not invoked, it will usually be desirable to send an E-mail
 message to an entity specified in the configuration information. The
 E-mail message will specify the name of the failed system and the name of
 the report sent, so that the entity receiving the E-mail will be able to
 find the report.
 The system and the remote site are then disconnected, and a remote
 reporting history is updated. As reports are sent to the host, a remote
 history file is created on the local system (or updated) to reflect the
 time of the report, the type of the report, where the report was sent to,
 and the files transmitted with the report. This file is kept on the local
 system diagnostic media.
 The foregoing has described in detail an automated dead system reporting
 mechanism. The reporting mechanism sends a number of error data files to a
 remote site via a modem. Once the files have been transferred, an
 automated analysis program may be run to determine the fault. Once the
 fault has been detected, a report detailing the fault and possible
 solutions may be E-mailed to the group responsible for system support. A
 dead system may be reported by virtue of the fact that the reporting
 mechanism is implemented as PROM-resident firmware that may be invoked
 independent of whether the system may be successfully rebooted.
 The principles, preferred embodiments and modes of operation of the present
 invention have been described above; however, the invention should not be
 construed as limited to the particular embodiments discussed. Instead, the
 above described embodiments should be regarded as illustrative rather than
 restrictive, and it should be appreciated that variations may be made in
 those embodiments by workers skilled in the art without departing from the
 scope of the present invention as defined by the following claims.