[c-nsp] GOLD on 6500s

[Phil Mayers]

All,

We had an outage yesterday and initial analysis looks like a SUP going
bad. I've currently got the card in the spare chassis running
diagnostics and this has reminded me I've got some questions about GOLD
that I've never had answered (Cisco: the IOS docs for GOLD in 12.2SX are
awful)

 1. I've seen modules fail individual tests, then pass them later on
(either after a reload, or after being re-seated). It's my perception
that a FAIL doesn't necessarily imply the card is bad, but a PASS
definitely implies the card is good (at that time). Is this in fact the
case?

 2. The GOLD docs are a little unclear on exactly what some of the steps
are. Does anyone have the IOS commands (including any relevant initial
"conf t" / "wr mem", and inter-diagnostic "reload") to FULLY diagnose
both a sup720 and 67xx series linecards?

 3. Many of the tests state "do not perform packet switching during this
time". What does this imply? Is it sufficient to merely unplug the ports
on that individual linecard? Or shut down all the SVIs? Or do you
basically have to completely unconfigure the linecard so no packets will
pass from the fabric to the card?

 4. Can GOLD diagnostic results be extracted over SNMP? In particular,
if the non-destructive tests are scheduled nightly/weekly, how do people
go about checking the results (and keeping history)?

 5. Talking about the non-disruptive tests, why isn't there a:
"diagnostic start module N test non-disruptive"; the docs say you have
to do a "show diagnostic content", manually count off the non-disruptive
tests (which I guess differ per-linecard/linecard model?) and build this
list manually. Tedious.

All input appreciated

Cheers,
Phil