SEL Troubleshooting Guide

System Event Log Troubleshooting Guide for Intel
®
S5500/S3420 Series Server Boards System BIOS Events
Revision 1.1 Intel order number G74211-002 63
9. System BIOS Events
There are a number of events that are owned by the system BIOS. These events can occur during Power On Self Test (POST) or when coming
out of a sleep state. Not all of these events signify errors. Some events are described in other chapters in this document (for example, memory
events).
9.1 System Events
These events can occur during POST or when coming out of a sleep state. These are informational events only.
1. When logging events during POST BIOS uses generator ID 0001h.
2. When coming out of a sleep state BIOS uses generator ID 0033h.
9.1.1 System Boot
The BIOS logs a system boot event every time the system boots. The event gets logged early during POST when BIOS-BMC communication is
first established. This event is not an error.
9.1.2 Timestamp Clock Synchronization
These events are used when the time between the BIOS and the BMC is synchronized. Two events are logged. The BIOS does the first one to
send the time synch message to the BMC for synchronization, and the timestamp that the message gets is unknown, that is, the timestamp in
the log could be anything because it gets the "before" timestamp.
So the BIOS sends a second time synch message to get a "baseline" correct timestamp in the log. That is the "starting time".
For example, say that the time the BMC has is March 1, 2011 21:00. The BIOS time synch updates that to the same date, 21:20 (the BMC was
running behind). Without that second time synch message, you don't know that the log time jumped ahead, and when you get the next log
message it looks like there was a 20-min delay during the boot for some unknown reasons.
Without that second time synch message, the time span to the next logged message is indeterminate. With the second time synch as a
baseline, the following log timestamps are always determinate.