Topic

This article applies to legacy BIG-IP platforms supported by BIG-IP 9.x through 11.1.0. For information about the LED behavior for current platforms supported by current versions, refer to the platform guide for your specific platform.

Note: For information about how to locate F5 product guides, refer to K12453464: Finding product documentation on AskF5.

Legacy platforms

• BIG-IP 1500 (C36)
• BIG-IP 3400 (C62)
• BIG-IP 4100 (D46)
• BIG-IP 6400 (D63)
• BIG-IP 6800 (D68)
• BIG-IP 8400 (D84)
• BIG-IP 8800 (D88) – version 9.4 and later only

LED indicators

Legacy platforms use 4 front-panel LEDs to indicate a system’s status:

• Power
• Status
• Activity
• Alarm

Power LED indicator

The Power LED indicator reports the power status: on (green), off (none), or error (red).

LED behavior	Description
Solid Green	Normal Power ON condition
Off (none)	Normal Power OFF condition
Solid Red	Standby Power/Failure

Note: Solid Red Failure indication occurs when there are rapid cycles of power (power-off, power-on, power-off, power-on). This condition can usually be corrected by powering off and waiting 2 minutes before turning the power back on.

Status LED indicator

The Status LED indicator reports the Active or Standby status: Active (green), or Standby (yellow).

LED behavior	Description
Solid Green	Active
Solid Yellow	Standby

Activity LED indicator

The purpose of the Activity LED indicator is to indicate traffic going to the CPU for load balancing or other software processing. It is not intended as a substitute for the individual Activity LEDs present on each network interface.

The Activity LED uses hardware inputs as an indication of load balancing activity. On legacy platforms this is driven by a signal from a PHY on an internal Ethernet interface connecting the switch subsystem to the CPU subsystem. It is possible that the Activity LED flickers even when there are no active links on the network interfaces.

LED behavior	Description
Intermittent Yellow	Activity on the switch to CPU Ethernet interface

Note: The 8400 platform activity LED illuminates while the system is power cycling, and turns off after the boot process has completed. For more information, refer to: K10161: The Activity LED operation on 8400 platforms.

Alarm LED indicator

A single LED (Alarm) conveys an alert level (warning, error, alert, critical, and emergency). The specific alert condition is communicated by an SNMP trap and a log message. Additionally, the specific alert condition will be indicated on the LCD screen.

Alert level LED behavior

There are 5 alert levels:

Alert Level	LED behavior
0 – Warning	Solid Yellow
1 – Error	Blink Yellow
2 – Alert	Solid Red
3 – Critical	Solid Red
4 – Emergency	Blink Red

Alert conditions

Alerts that affect the behavior of the Alarm LED indicator are defined in the /etc/alertd/alert.conf file. The lcdwarn function of an alert definition defines which alerts will modify the Alarm LED indicator.

As an example, the default alertd process conditions in BIG-IP 9.2 are defined in the following table:

Description	Alert Level	LED behavior
CPU Temp too high	3 – Critical	Solid Red
CPU fan too slow	3 – Critical	Solid Red
CPU fan bad	3 – Critical	Solid Red
Chassis Temp too high	3 – Critical	Solid Red
Chassis Fan bad	3 – Critical	Solid Red
Power Supply bad	4 – Emergency	Blink Red
Unit going standby	0 – Warning	Solid Yellow
Unit going Active	0 – Warning	Solid Yellow
The license validation failed	2 – Alert	Solid Red
The license has expired	2 – Alert	Solid Red
Blocking DoS attack	2 – Alert	Solid Red
Hard disk is failing	4 – Emergency	Blink Red

Note: An alert condition is no longer triggered when a node or member has been marked down. For additional information about this functionality, refer to K5486: BIG-IP does not signal an alert condition through the front panel Alarm LED when a node or member is marked down.

Topic

You should consider using this procedure under the following condition:

• You want to remotely clear LCD warnings and the Alarm LED.

Prerequisites

You must meet the following prerequisite to use this procedure:

• You have command line access to the BIG-IP system.

Description

In some cases, you may want to remotely clear LCD warnings and the Alarm LED. Performing this action may prevent onsite personnel from discovering and reporting an old warning, or having to teach the onsite personnel how to clear the LCD. You can use the lcdwarn command line utility to control the LCD and the Alarm LED. To display its usage, run the lcdwarn command without any arguments.

Note: Starting in BIG-IP 12.1.0, you can use the tmsh show sys alert lcd command to display the list of alerts sent to the LCD front panel display.

Procedures

• Clearing LCD warnings
• Clearing the Alarm LED

Clearing LCD warnings

Impact of procedure: Performing the following procedure should not have a negative impact on your system.You can use the lcdwarn command to remotely clear the LCD warnings. To do so, use the following command syntax appropriate for your BIG-IP version:

BIG-IP 12.1.5, BIG-IP 13.1.0 and later

lcdwarn -c <level>

In this command syntax, note the following:

• <level> specifies the alert level to be cleared. Acceptable values include [0|1|2|3|4|5] or [warning|error|alert|critical|emergency|information]. The level can be seen under the “Priority” column when you run tmsh show sys alert from the Advanced Shell (bash) or show sys alert from within the tmsh shell:
  
  root@(C3553740-bigip1)(cfg-sync Standalone)(Active)(/Common)(tmos)# show sys alert
  —————————————————————-
  Sys::LCDAlerts
  Slot          Timestamp  Priority         Id         Description
  —————————————————————-
  0     04/22/21 02:21:07      info  0x10c0019  Unit going Active.
  0     04/22/21 01:22:55      info  0x10c0019  Unit going Active.
  0     04/22/21 01:16:28      info  0x10c0019  Unit going Active.
  0     04/22/21 01:16:28      info  0x10c0019  Unit going Active.

For example, to clear LCD warnings with an alert level of 0, type the following command:

lcdwarn -c 0

BIG-IP 13.0.0, BIG-IP 12.1.4 and earlier

lcdwarn -c <level> <slotid>

In this command syntax, note the following:

• <level> specifies the alert level to be cleared. Acceptable values include [0|1|2|3|4|5] or [warning|error|alert|critical|emergency|information].
• <slotid> specifies the slot for which warnings should be cleared. Acceptable values include [0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8].Note: In BIG-IP 13.0.0, BIG-IP 12.1.4 and earlier, specifying any slot other than 0 is necessary only on the VIPRION platform. On a VIPRION platform, the slot ID is counted from 1, so blade 2 is 2 in the command line.

For example, to clear LCD warnings with an alert level of 0, type the following command:

lcdwarn -c 0 0

On a VIPRION system, to clear LCD warnings with an alert level of 0 for slot 2, type the following command:

lcdwarn -c 0 2

---

Clearing the Alarm LED

To clear the Alarm LED, you must clear all LCD warnings at all alert levels (on all slots for VIPRION systems). To do so, perform the following single command appropriate for your BIG-IP platform:

Impact of procedure: Performing the following procedure should not have a negative impact on your system.

• VIPRION platforms
• BIG-IP iSeries platforms
• All other BIG-IP platforms (except for VIPRION platforms and BIG-IP iSeries platforms)

VIPRION platforms

You can clear all LCD warnings at all alert levels on all VIPRION slots using the following single command:

BIG-IP 12.1.5, BIG-IP 13.1.0 and later

for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5; do lcdwarn -c “${i}”; done

BIG-IP 13.0.0, BIG-IP 12.1.4 and earlier

for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5; do for j in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8; do lcdwarn -c “${i}” “${j}”; done; done

If you run this command on a VIPRION system that has unpopulated blade slots, the system logs benign error messages to the /var/log/ltm file that appear similar to the following example:

012a0004:4: ledSet error: LopDev: sendLopCmd: Lopd status: 1 packet: action=2 obj_id=3c sub_obj=0 slot_id=2 result=2 len=0 crc=e071 payload= (error code:0x2)

You can safely ignore this message; it does not affect the traffic processing capability of the VIPRION system.

To prevent this error message on a VIPRION system with unpopulated blade slots, adjust the input values for the j variable. For example, on a VIPRION system where only blade slots 1 and 2 are populated, type the following command:

for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5; do for j in 1 2; do lcdwarn -c “${i}” “${j}”; done; done

BIG-IP iSeries platforms

For information about clearing the Alarm LED on BIG-IP iSeries platforms, refer to K24127736: Clear LCD alarms on iSeries device.

All other BIG-IP platforms (except for VIPRION platforms and BIG-IP iSeries platforms)

You can clear all LCD warnings at all alert levels on all other BIG-IP platforms (except for VIPRION platforms) using the following single command:

BIG-IP 12.1.5, BIG-IP 13.1.0 and later

for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5; do lcdwarn -c “${i}”; done

BIG-IP 13.0.0, BIG-IP 12.1.4 and earlier

for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5; do lcdwarn -c “${i}” 0; done

Note: Running this command on legacy BIG-IP platforms that are not equipped with an LCD (such as the 1000, 2400, 5100, and 5110) only clear the Alarm LED.