A short note about my Dell CS24 to accompany the post about the Sun T5120.

You can find used CS24s in large quantities on EBay. Decent value. There’s really not much profit for sellers holding anything cheaper in inventory, so they’re among the least expensive servers you can find. But it’s not all good news. From what I’ve gathered, it’s a special model built for huge enterprise customers and not normally available to solo losers like me. As such, Dell support doesn’t have much in the way of information or firmware updates. Whatever; it’s a PC server and OpenBSD runs on PC servers. Mine is the SC model (I think), there seem to be a few varieties.

It has VGA, net, and serial consoles. I used VGA; no comments on the others. It’s an enterprise computer, built for environments where every second of downtime counts, so don’t expect it to reboot in less than four minutes.

There are a few cut corners. The baffling to direct interior airflow is made from cheap cardboard. Chinese takeout boxes are made of sturdier stuff. The mpi controller is SATA only, no SCSI disk support (no matter, I only planned to use it with SSDs). The interior layout is very similar to the T5120, but somehow more cluttered.

When powered on, it draws about 1.0 amps (120V). While idling, that drops to 0.8 amps, but I could push it up to about 1.5 by spinning up all the cores. When first started, the fans are pretty loud, but then settle down into hairdryer low speed. It’s annoying, but not lethal.

My model originally came with 16GB RAM. memtest86+ doesn’t recognize/support the chipset, but after testing I noticed some warning messages in the BIOS about ECC errors. Shuffle DIMM slots, retest to confirm bad stick, tossed it. 8GB ought to be enough for tedu.

dmesg

OpenBSD 5.5-beta (GENERIC.MP) #284: Mon Feb  3 07:57:32 MST 2014
    todd@amd64.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/amd64/compile/GENERIC.MP
real mem = 8572436480 (8175MB)
avail mem = 8336023552 (7949MB)
mainbus0 at root
bios0 at mainbus0: SMBIOS rev. 2.5 @ 0xfcab0 (78 entries)
bios0: vendor Dell Computer Corporation version "S45_3A20" date 01/21/2009
bios0: Dell CS24-SC
acpi0 at bios0: rev 2
acpi0: sleep states S0 S1 S4 S5
acpi0: tables DSDT FACP APIC SPCR MCFG SSDT OEMB HPET SSDT
acpitimer0 at acpi0: 3579545 Hz, 24 bits
acpimadt0 at acpi0 addr 0xfee00000: PC-AT compat
cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor)
cpu0: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz, 2500.44 MHz
cpu0: 6MB 64b/line 16-way L2 cache
cpu0: smt 0, core 0, package 0
mtrr: Pentium Pro MTRR support, 8 var ranges, 88 fixed ranges
cpu0: apic clock running at 333MHz
cpu0: mwait min=64, max=64, C-substates=0.2.2.2.0, IBE
cpu1 at mainbus0: apid 4 (application processor)
cpu1: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz, 2500.09 MHz
cpu1: 6MB 64b/line 16-way L2 cache
cpu1: smt 0, core 0, package 1
cpu2 at mainbus0: apid 1 (application processor)
cpu2: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz, 2500.09 MHz
cpu2: 6MB 64b/line 16-way L2 cache
cpu2: smt 0, core 1, package 0
cpu3 at mainbus0: apid 5 (application processor)
cpu3: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz, 2500.09 MHz
cpu3: 6MB 64b/line 16-way L2 cache
cpu3: smt 0, core 1, package 1
cpu4 at mainbus0: apid 2 (application processor)
cpu4: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz, 2500.09 MHz
cpu4: 6MB 64b/line 16-way L2 cache
cpu4: smt 0, core 2, package 0
cpu5 at mainbus0: apid 6 (application processor)
cpu5: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz, 2500.09 MHz
cpu5: 6MB 64b/line 16-way L2 cache
cpu5: smt 0, core 2, package 1
cpu6 at mainbus0: apid 3 (application processor)
cpu6: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz, 2500.09 MHz
cpu6: 6MB 64b/line 16-way L2 cache
cpu6: smt 0, core 3, package 0
cpu7 at mainbus0: apid 7 (application processor)
cpu7: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz, 2500.09 MHz
cpu7: 6MB 64b/line 16-way L2 cache
cpu7: smt 0, core 3, package 1
ioapic0 at mainbus0: apid 8 pa 0xfec00000, version 20, 24 pins
acpimcfg0 at acpi0 addr 0xe0000000, bus 0-255
acpihpet0 at acpi0: 14318179 Hz
acpiprt0 at acpi0: bus 0 (PCI0)
acpiprt1 at acpi0: bus 3 (NPE6)
acpiprt2 at acpi0: bus 7 (P0P1)
acpiprt3 at acpi0: bus -1 (NPE2)
acpiprt4 at acpi0: bus 1 (NPE4)
acpiprt5 at acpi0: bus 5 (P0P4)
acpiprt6 at acpi0: bus 6 (P0P8)
acpicpu0 at acpi0: PSS
acpicpu1 at acpi0: PSS
acpicpu2 at acpi0: PSS
acpicpu3 at acpi0: PSS
acpicpu4 at acpi0: PSS
acpicpu5 at acpi0: PSS
acpicpu6 at acpi0: PSS
acpicpu7 at acpi0: PSS
acpibtn0 at acpi0: SLPB
acpibtn1 at acpi0: PWRB
ipmi at mainbus0 not configured
cpu0: Enhanced SpeedStep 2500 MHz: speeds: 2499, 2003 MHz
pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0
pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "Intel 5100 Host" rev 0x90
ppb0 at pci0 dev 4 function 0 "Intel 5100 PCIE" rev 0x90: msi
pci1 at ppb0 bus 1
ppb1 at pci0 dev 5 function 0 "Intel 5100 PCIE" rev 0x90
pci2 at ppb1 bus 2
ppb2 at pci0 dev 6 function 0 "Intel 5100 PCIE" rev 0x90: msi
pci3 at ppb2 bus 3
ppb3 at pci0 dev 7 function 0 "Intel 5100 PCIE" rev 0x90
pci4 at ppb3 bus 4
"Intel I/OAT SCNB" rev 0x90 at pci0 dev 8 function 0 not configured
pchb1 at pci0 dev 16 function 0 "Intel 5100 FSB" rev 0x90
pchb2 at pci0 dev 16 function 1 "Intel 5100 FSB" rev 0x90
pchb3 at pci0 dev 16 function 2 "Intel 5100 FSB" rev 0x90
pchb4 at pci0 dev 17 function 0 "Intel 5100 Reserved" rev 0x90
pchb5 at pci0 dev 19 function 0 "Intel 5100 Reserved" rev 0x90
pchb6 at pci0 dev 21 function 0 "Intel 5100 DDR" rev 0x90
pchb7 at pci0 dev 22 function 0 "Intel 5100 DDR" rev 0x90
em0 at pci0 dev 25 function 0 "Intel ICH9 IGP AMT" rev 0x02: msi, address 00:23:8b:8a:11:f4
uhci0 at pci0 dev 26 function 0 "Intel 82801I USB" rev 0x02: apic 8 int 23
ehci0 at pci0 dev 26 function 7 "Intel 82801I USB" rev 0x02: apic 8 int 21
usb0 at ehci0: USB revision 2.0
uhub0 at usb0 "Intel EHCI root hub" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 1
ppb4 at pci0 dev 28 function 0 "Intel 82801I PCIE" rev 0x02: msi
pci5 at ppb4 bus 5
mpi0 at pci5 dev 0 function 0 "Symbios Logic SAS1064E" rev 0x02: msi
scsibus0 at mpi0: 112 targets
sd0 at scsibus0 targ 0 lun 0: <ATA, Samsung SSD 840, BB6Q> SCSI3 0/direct fixed naa.50025388a01743fd
sd0: 114473MB, 512 bytes/sector, 234441648 sectors
ppb5 at pci0 dev 28 function 4 "Intel 82801I PCIE" rev 0x02: msi
pci6 at ppb5 bus 6
em1 at pci6 dev 0 function 0 "Intel 82573E" rev 0x03: msi, address 00:23:8b:8a:11:f5
uhci1 at pci0 dev 29 function 0 "Intel 82801I USB" rev 0x02: apic 8 int 23
uhci2 at pci0 dev 29 function 1 "Intel 82801I USB" rev 0x02: apic 8 int 22
uhci3 at pci0 dev 29 function 2 "Intel 82801I USB" rev 0x02: apic 8 int 21
ehci1 at pci0 dev 29 function 7 "Intel 82801I USB" rev 0x02: apic 8 int 23
usb1 at ehci1: USB revision 2.0
uhub1 at usb1 "Intel EHCI root hub" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 1
ppb6 at pci0 dev 30 function 0 "Intel 82801BA Hub-to-PCI" rev 0x92
pci7 at ppb6 bus 7
vga1 at pci7 dev 3 function 0 "ASPEED Technology AST2000" rev 0x00
wsdisplay0 at vga1 mux 1: console (80x25, vt100 emulation)
wsdisplay0: screen 1-5 added (80x25, vt100 emulation)
pcib0 at pci0 dev 31 function 0 "Intel 82801IR LPC" rev 0x02
ichiic0 at pci0 dev 31 function 3 "Intel 82801I SMBus" rev 0x02: apic 8 int 18
iic0 at ichiic0
usb2 at uhci0: USB revision 1.0
uhub2 at usb2 "Intel UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
usb3 at uhci1: USB revision 1.0
uhub3 at usb3 "Intel UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
usb4 at uhci2: USB revision 1.0
uhub4 at usb4 "Intel UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
usb5 at uhci3: USB revision 1.0
uhub5 at usb5 "Intel UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
isa0 at pcib0
isadma0 at isa0
com0 at isa0 port 0x3f8/8 irq 4: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo
com1 at isa0 port 0x2f8/8 irq 3: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo
pckbc0 at isa0 port 0x60/5
pckbd0 at pckbc0 (kbd slot)
pckbc0: using irq 1 for kbd slot
wskbd0 at pckbd0: console keyboard, using wsdisplay0
pcppi0 at isa0 port 0x61
spkr0 at pcppi0
uhidev0 at uhub2 port 1 configuration 1 interface 0 "VIRTUAL USB MULTIMEDIA KEYBOARD" rev 1.10/0.01 addr 2
uhidev0: iclass 3/1
ukbd0 at uhidev0: 8 variable keys, 6 key codes, country code 33
wskbd1 at ukbd0 mux 1
wskbd1: connecting to wsdisplay0
uhidev1 at uhub2 port 1 configuration 1 interface 1 "VIRTUAL USB MULTIMEDIA KEYBOARD" rev 1.10/0.01 addr 2
uhidev1: iclass 3/1
ums0 at uhidev1: 3 buttons, Z dir
wsmouse0 at ums0 mux 0
vscsi0 at root
scsibus1 at vscsi0: 256 targets
softraid0 at root
scsibus2 at softraid0: 256 targets
root on sd0a (b54808317f2b3d59.a) swap on sd0b dump on sd0b