The SGI L1 and L2 Controller Software User's Guide

See also: Robyn's notes on SGI power on/off

First, shut down the OS (you will need to login as root).

Next, if you haven't already, you'll need to connect to its console port. That ought to be documented elsewhere. It is currently port 40 on cts3.mfcf.

Then you'll want to power off all the bricks, it'll look something like this at first (bold is what you type):

N0000698-001-L2> pwr

001i01:
power appears on
001c05:
power appears on
001c08:
power appears on
001c11:
power appears on
001r14:
power appears on
001r16:
power appears on
001c18:
power appears on

So you want to do:

N0000698-001-L2> pwr down

WARNING: power on 001c05 console0 appears off

re-entering system console mode (001c05 console0),  to escape to L2

Now, all the bricks are powered down from 48 volt operating power to 12 volt standby power. The L1 controllers on each brick are still active (which is how you can still use L1 and L2 commands to power the system back up at this point). If you need to completely remove power, turn off the PDU breakers. There are two PDUs in each rack. Flip open the little cover to get to the breaker switch.

When you power back up, it's important to try to flip those breakers back on pretty close to simultaneously; otherwise, the discovery process might not find all the bricks in the system. See Robyn's notes in MFCF internal web space for details on this situation.