When B<-t> is specified, this command reads the connection information from the xCAT ppc table (e.g. the parent attribute), and read the user/password from the ppcdirect table. Then this command will assign CEC nodes and Frame nodes to HMC nodes.
When B<-p> is specified, this command gets the connection information from command line arguments. If B<-P> is not specified, the default password for CEC and Frame nodes is used.
The flag B<-s> is used to make the connection between the frame and its Service focal point(HMC). Makehwconn will also set the connections between the CECs within this Frame and the HMC. The sfp of the frame/CEC can either be defined in ppc table beforehand or specified in command line after the flag -s. If the user use mkhwconn noderange -s HMC_name, it will not only make the connections but also set the sfp attributes for these nodes in PPC table.
In any case, before running this command, the CEC and Frame nodes need be defined with correct nodetype.nodetype value (cec or frame) and nodehm.mgt value (hmc).
Note: If a CEC belongs to a frame, which has a BPA installed, this CEC should not be assigned to an HMC individually. Instead, the whole frame should be assigned to the HMC.
It is used to set up connections for CEC, Frame and Firebird node to Hardware Server on management node (or service node ). It only could be done according to the node definition in xCAT DB. And this command will try to read the user/password from the ppcdirect table (for Firebird, from mpa table) first. If fails, then read them from passwd table.
Commonly , the username is B<HMC>. If using the B<ppcdirect> table, each CEC/Frame and user/password should be stored in B<ppcdirect> table. If using the B<passwd> table, the key should be "B<cec>" or "B<frame>", and the related user/password are stored in B<passwd> table.
The tooltype is used to communicate to the CEC/Frame. The value could be B<lpar> or B<fnm>. The tooltype value B<lpar> is for xCAT and B<fnm> is for CNM. The default value is "B<lpar>".
The port value specifies which special side will be used to create the connection to the CEC/Frame. The value could only be specified as "B<0>" or "B<1>" and the default value is "B<0,1>". If the user wants to use all ports to create the connection, he should not specify this value. If the port value is specified as "B<0>", in the vpd table, the side column should be B<A-0> and B<B-0>; If the port value is specified as "B<1>", the side column should be B<A-1> and B<B-1>. When making hardware connection between CEC/Frame and HMC, the value is used to specify the fsp/bpa port of the cec/frame and will be organized in order of "B<A-0,A-1,B-0,B-1>". If any side does not exist, the side would simply be ignored. Generally, only one port of a fsp/bap can be connected while another port be used as backup.
The flag -s is used to make the connection between the frame and its Service Focal Point(HMC). -s flag is not supposed to work with other functional flags.
To setup the connection between the frame and it's SFP node. This command will also set the connections between the CECs within this frame and their SFP node. User need to define HMC_name in the database in advance, but no need to set the sfp attribute for these node, xCAT will set the HMC_name as ppc.sfp for these nodes. The CECs within this frame should have the same sfp attribute as the frame.