[c-nsp] Problems with A99-8X100GE-TR and IOS XR 6.5.3

[Tom Hill]

On 2023-06-01 21:38, Bryan Holloway via cisco-nsp wrote:
> https://community.cisco.com/t5/xr-os-and-platforms/problems-with-a99-8x100ge-tr-and-ios-xr-6-5-3/td-p/4013668
> 
> This chassis has been up and churning packets for several years, so it
> was presumed to be a possible hardware fail.
> 
> We acquired another A99-8X100GE-TR and hammered it in, but it won't
> boot at all. Similar issues -- NPs are unhappy -- won't initialize
> right.
> 
> Our fear is a backplane issue, until I stumbled across that post.
> 
> At the moment, we are in fact running 6.5.3 SP6. FPDs are upgraded, we
> also have RSP880s, same chassis (9904). Sound familiar?

I've not seen this specific issue, but I am curious around two things:

  1. Given the insight from the URL referenced, when did you upgrade the 
FPDs to the version required by 6.5.3? Presumably after upgrade? How 
long did it take between that action and the card misbehaving?

   1a. Is there a difference in HW revision on the 8x100GE card you 
had/have bought to replace?


  2. I went to check for obvious things in the release notes for 6.5.x 
(e.g. a x.y.4 or .5 release that cites a fix for your LC) but it's "so 
old" a release train that the relnotes have been taken down.

   2a. Even the FPD values in the 6.7.1 release appear to be newer for 
the 8x100G card, so I would be remiss for suggesting that you get 
yourself on a supported release train - as even without hitting 7.x 
you're still missing out on updates - and probably fixes - for your 
card.

Too many years of working with XR caused me to worry a lot less about 
version upgrades, but to also the scour the release notes very, very 
carefully before I did any of them.

Tom