fwts crashes Lenovo x3650

[Rod Smith]

Running fwts as part of Checkbox (canonical-certification-server) causes a Lenovo x3650, booted in UEFI mode, to hang or crash. The firmware version information is:

* UEFI version 1.11 (build TCE106LUS, 2015-06-26)
* IMM version 1.81 (build TCOO10Q, 2015-06-17)

A previous test, in March, caused no crash; but at that time, the firmware was an earlier version:

* UEFI version 1.01 (build TCE104US, 2014-10-21)
* IMM version 1.02 (build TCOO02J, 2014-12-03)

A very similar x3550, running UEFI 1.03 and IMM 1.02, booted in BIOS mode, did NOT crash with the current fwts. Thus, my suspicion is that the failure is caused by something in the updated firmware, not in a recent change to fwts; however, it could be that the hang is being caused by a change to fwts that affects only UEFI-mode boots and not BIOS-mode boots.

When the system hangs or crashes, it disappears from the network. The first time it occurred, the ARP table on the system through which I was connected showed "incomplete" rather than a MAC address for the server. The second time, it disappeared entirely from the ARP table. Attempts to ping or SSH to the Lenovo fail.

Our window for experimentation is very narrow, because the machine needs to be returned to the OIL network from the certification network in the next few days, but we should be able to perform additional tests in late October.