A service processor surveillance mechanism is provided for multiple partitions.
Each partition stores its own official response. The surveillance routine checks
to see if it has enough time for the service processor to respond to its previous
probe. If sufficient time has not passed, the surveillance code returns to the
calling function with the partition's official response. If sufficient time has
passed, the surveillance code reads the surveillance byte in nonvolatile random
access memory. The surveillance code then determines the current state of the service
processor and determines whether the official response needs to be updated. If
the surveillance code updates the official response, the partition's official response
is set to the updated official response and returns the partition's official response.
If the official response has not changed since the last time the partition probed
the surveillance byte, then the surveillance code returns a neutral value.
