SUMMARY: ELC instead of SLC

From: Gregory Gutarts (greg@orbot.co.il)
Date: Mon May 11 1992 - 01:38:53 CDT


        Shalom, Managers !

Many thanks to all of you who tried to help me. My original
message was:

> I have a very strange problem with substituting my SLC to ELC. The
> configuration was:

> - SLC;
> - SunOS 4.1.1;
> - Two disks (HP and Maxtor), Archive 1/4" tape
> and EXAByte 8200.

> My idea is to change the computer without changing anything else. The
> new ELC starts booting but after the messages:

> root on sd0a fstype 4.2
> swap on sd0b fstype spec size 40320K
> dump on sd0b fstype spec size 40308K

> it gets stuck. I've tried everything i can and i cannot (e.g. another
> kernel, changing SCSI chain configuration, disconnecting fron the
> network, changing the memory and the motherboard of the ELC, checking
> the /sbin and /etc files and comparing them with other ELCs etc). As
> far as i can see the new ELC don't want to execute the rc.boot file.
> But why ?

Sorry for disturbing all of you, we have found the decision
of the problem before recieving the mail. Nevertheless, i highly
appreciate you help.

The proper answer we've got from Steinar Haug, system/networks
administrator, University of Trondheim, NORWAY
(Steinar.Haug@delab.sintef.no, sthaug@idt.unit.no,
steinar@tosca.er.sintef.no ). The answer is:

====================== Quotation Start =============================

Your problem sounds a lot like the one I fought with yesterday. One of
our ELCs, connected to an HP-97548SU disk, gets stuck in the same
place. The same machine (and disk) has booted and worked fine earlier,
but suddenly started behaving weirdly.

I haven't been able to track down the problem so far, but I *suspect*
the HP disk. Some firmware revisions for the 97548 are known to have
problems on ELCs (but not on SLCs), probably because the ELCs are
faster. One of the things I would try (and which I'm going to try out
myself tomorrow), is to generate a kernel with synchronous SCSI
disabled, and see if this works better. Either change the file

        /usr/sys/scsi/conf/scsi_confdata.c

and regenerate kernel, or patch the variable scsi_options in the
running kernel:

        # adb -w -k /vmunix /dev/mem
        scsi_options/W 58
        scsi_options?W 58
        $q

As I said, I'll try this out tomorrow...

Steinar Haug, system/networks administrator
SINTEF DELAB, University of Trondheim, NORWAY
Email: Steinar.Haug@delab.sintef.no,
        sthaug@idt.unit.no, steinar@tosca.er.sintef.no

====================== Quotation End =============================

It really works ! The problem was in the HP disk firmware version.
After disabling the synchronous SCSI option everything works fine.
Thank you very much.

============================================================================
Gregory Gutarts greg@orbot.co.il
System Administrator voice: 972-8-433533
Orbot Systems Ltd. fax: 972-8-438769
Industrial Zone, P.O.Box 215
70651 Yavne, Israel
============================================================================



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