SUMMARY: Problem with SCSI disk on SLC

From: DIJ (tom@sees.bangor.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Dec 15 1992 - 22:25:31 CST


Hello Sun Managers,

Thanks for all the replies. It was obvious from the responses that I hadn't
stated the problem at all clearly. So here goes again:

A diskless SLC was to be upgraded to standalone.

I successfully formatted and partitioned the disk on the machine in question
and put a full 4.1.3 system on the disk from a local CDROM.

I rebuilt the kernel and rebooted the machine. It booted OK. I rebuilt the
kernel again and decided as the machine was down, I would take the opportunity
to remove the now redundant CDROM.

I tried to reboot the machine. It started to boot from the disk OK but at the
point where it says:

root on /dev/sd3a fstype 4.2
swap on /dev/sd3b fstype spec
dump on /dev/sd3b fstype spec

the screen went black and the machine started to test memory.

OK I thought, the kernel is corrupt or misconfigured. I then tried to reboot
the machine from the net using b le(). Again the machine booted correctly until
it reached the same point in the boot sequence as above when the same thing
occurred i.e:

dump on sol:/export/swap/helen fstype nfs

At this point I suspected that the SCSI bus was incorrectly terminated. I there-
fore swapped the terminator for a known good one. The little LED lit up, but
the machine still refused to pass the "dump on /dev/sd3b" line.

I therefore removed the disk. The machine booted correctly to the multiuser
prompt. I therefore suspected the disk as loading the SCSI bus strangely.

I wrote my first message to sun-managers, and went home.

The next day (today) I tried the disk on a different machine. It worked
perfectly I therefore concluded that the machine was broken and a new CPU
is being installed as soon as possible.

So it seems to be a HARWARE fault.

Thanks again to:

Anthony.Worrall@reading.ac.uk
blymn@awadi.com.AU (Brett Lymn)
don@mars.dgrc.doc.ca (Donald McLachlan)
laugh@dal.fsd.mot.com (Annette D. Smith)
vasey@issi.com
Mike Raffety <miker@il.us.swissbank.com>
danielle@systems.caltech.edu (Danielle Sanine)

Tom.

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  Tom Crummey, EMAIL: tom@sees.bangor.ac.uk | /\
  University of Wales, Bangor, | / \/\
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