mcelog not working with AMD processor family 16 and above on SLES11 SP3

This document (7013006) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 3

Situation

On SLES mcelog is used to track hardware errors.
AMD processor families 16 and newer do not support mcelog.
On SLES11 SP3 running mcelog with newer AMD CPUs leaves /var/log/mcelog empty, even in case of hardware errors.

Resolution

For these CPUs the kernel module edac_mce_amd is to be loaded instead of using mcelog.
Yet loading the module still is triggered by the mcelog startscript:

linux:~ # /etc/init.d/mcelog start
Starting mcelog... AMD CPU detected, loading edac_mce_amd done

Update:
A mcelog patch has been released to fix this issue on October 24, 2013.

Cause

AMD processor families 16 and newer do not support mcelog.
Intel processors are not affected and still can be monitored with mcelog.

Additional Information

If a hardware error is found, edac_mce_amd does not log into /var/log/mcelog but into /var/log/messages instead.

The keyword for a failure is: [Hardware Error]

Example of a failure:

[32683.598837] [Hardware Error]: MC4 Error (node 0): DRAM ECC error detected on the NB.
[32683.615771] [Hardware Error]: Error Status: Corrected error, no action required.
[32683.615780] [Hardware Error]: CPU:0 (15:2:0) MC4_STATUS[-|CE|MiscV|-|AddrV|-|-|CECC]: 0x9c4a400053080a13
[32683.615783] [Hardware Error]: MC4_ADDR: 0x000000032c4aa220
[32683.615790] [Hardware Error]: cache level: L3/GEN, mem/io: MEM, mem-tx: RD, part-proc: RES (no timeout)

Note: The mcelog version on the SP3 DVD (mcelog-1.0.2013.01.18-0.11.9) contains a cosmetical bug and prints an error even on processor family 15 which still works with mcelog. A fixed package is available but as of early August 2013 not yet released
Make sure to install the latest mcelog update from the update channels if you spot a higher mcelog version than mentioned above, please.

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