Lenovo SR675 V3 Stuck Polling BIOS Setup v2.2 New

Use this playbook when a Lenovo ThinkSystem SR675 V3 OVX remains in Assigned/HostPlatformConfiguration/PollingBiosSetup and an instance cannot finish termination.

Symptoms

• An instance remains in Terminating.
• Managed-host history advances through ConfigureBios, then stops at PollingBiosSetup.
• Manual BIOS changes fail or appear to succeed without changing the effective configuration.

Inspect the affected instance and host:

nico-admin-cli instance show
nico-admin-cli -f json machine show <machine-id> \
  | jq -r '.events[] | "\(.time) \(.event)"' \
  | tail -10

Cause

NICo is waiting for the BMC to apply the requested BIOS settings and boot order. On an affected server, the BMC can silently retain inconsistent UEFI state, so NICo never observes the desired settings.

Clearing CMOS resets that UEFI state. Running machine setup afterward reapplies the settings and boot interface that NICo requires.

Allow Automated Recovery to Finish

When the BIOS setup check continues to return false, NICo automatically starts recovery after polling_bios_setup_stuck_threshold elapses. The default threshold is 15 minutes. Recovery powers off the host, resets the BMC, powers the host on, and runs machine setup again. NICo uses the shared max_bios_config_retries budget, which defaults to three attempts.

Inspect the managed-host history and controller logs while recovery runs. Do not clear CMOS while an automated recovery attempt is in progress. Continue with the manual procedure only after NICo exhausts the configured retry budget, or after the host repeatedly returns to PollingBiosSetup without converging.

Clear CMOS

1. Set the BMC connection variables. Obtain credentials from your approved credential store.

   export BMC_IP=<bmc-ip-address>
   export BMC_USER=<bmc-username>
   export BMC_PASS=<bmc-password>

2. Force the server off:

   curl --fail --silent --show-error --insecure \
     --user "${BMC_USER}:${BMC_PASS}" \
     --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     --data '{"ResetType":"ForceOff"}' \
     --request POST \
     "https://${BMC_IP}/redfish/v1/Systems/1/Actions/ComputerSystem.Reset"

3. Confirm that the server is off:

   curl --fail --silent --show-error --insecure \
     --user "${BMC_USER}:${BMC_PASS}" \
     "https://${BMC_IP}/redfish/v1/Systems/1" \
     | jq -r '.PowerState'

   Continue only when the command returns Off.

4. Read the existing UEFI administrator password into a shell variable without recording it in shell history:

   read -r -s -p 'UEFI administrator password: ' UEFI_PASSWORD
   printf '\n'

5. Invoke the Lenovo CMOS-clear action. Generate the request body with jq so that quotes, backslashes, and other characters in the password are encoded correctly:

   set -o pipefail
   printf '%s' "${UEFI_PASSWORD}" \
     | jq -Rs '{UefiAdminPassword: .}' \
     | curl --fail --silent --show-error --insecure \
       --user "${BMC_USER}:${BMC_PASS}" \
       --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
       --data-binary @- \
       --request POST \
       "https://${BMC_IP}/redfish/v1/Systems/1/Actions/Oem/LenovoComputerSystem.RemoteClearCMOS"
   unset UEFI_PASSWORD

6. Power the server on:

   curl --fail --silent --show-error --insecure \
     --user "${BMC_USER}:${BMC_PASS}" \
     --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
     --data '{"ResetType":"On"}' \
     --request POST \
     "https://${BMC_IP}/redfish/v1/Systems/1/Actions/ComputerSystem.Reset"

Reapply Machine Setup

1. Get the primary boot-interface MAC address:

   MAC_ADDRESS=$(nico-admin-cli -f json machine show <machine-id> \
     | jq -r '.status.interfaces[] | select(.primary_interface == true) | .mac_address')

2. Run machine setup after the server begins booting:

   nico-admin-cli redfish \
     --address "${BMC_IP}" \
     --username "${BMC_USER}" \
     --password "${BMC_PASS}" \
     machine-setup --boot-interface-mac "${MAC_ADDRESS}"

3. Check which setup operations remain:

   nico-admin-cli redfish \
     --address "${BMC_IP}" \
     --username "${BMC_USER}" \
     --password "${BMC_PASS}" \
     machine-setup-status --boot-interface-mac "${MAC_ADDRESS}"

   If machine setup ran too early in the boot process, wait for the BMC to become ready and rerun it.

Verify Recovery

1. Confirm that machine history advances past PollingBiosSetup:

   nico-admin-cli -f json machine show <machine-id> \
     | jq -r '.events[] | "\(.time) \(.event)"' \
     | tail -10

2. Confirm that the host leaves Assigned/HostPlatformConfiguration/PollingBiosSetup.

3. Confirm that the instance completes termination.

For general state inspection, refer to State Machine Debugging.