Summary: st.conf (Storedge L9)

Here's the summary for this problem.Many thanks to following people who
responded and helped me with this and subsequent problems that arose from
this issue. To amerliorate the glm.timeout issue, Matt Hall suggested (and
it's a really good one, thanks):

###
"When system memory gets low, Solaris unloads unused drivers from memory
and reloads drivers as needed ... "
So you can try adding
forceload: drv/st
forceload: drv/sg
###

I also duly patched the server and it turns out patch 107460-12, clobbers
the st.conf file and fine-tunes how the server and StorEdge communicate
(for clarification Solaris 5.7 & 5.8 do not need st.conf mod's only 2.6
does - and there is a yellow insert that came with the L9 that gives you
the entries:

"QUANTUM DLT8000", "Quantum DLT8000 (in st.conf)", "DLT8k-data";
DLT8k-data = 1,0x38,0,0x10639,4,0x84,0x85,0x88,0x89,3;


so what happened to me was after the application of the patch, existing
blocks on the tape were not being read effectively (or, were being read a
lot more effectively) so the backup's began to fail.  I had a mt -f i/o
error that was truly bizaare on top of this issue so it made the problem
that much harder to diagnose - BaiosThomas at Sun suggested power cycling
the StorEdge (duh, I dropped the ball on that one).

This on top of expiring the media and reassigning them (ouch!), and a boot
-r solved the problem.  I'm happily backing up data again.

It can only be hoped that st.conf clobbers in patches will not be occurring
too frequently, I happen to like having media with data living happily on
them (I could have purchased 7 new DLT tapes but didn't).

That was fun.  Till the next time,

David

Those who responded (thanks!)

Matthew Hall
Ivan Fetch
Scott Howard
Reinaldo Lums Ono
Joel Cederholm - Veritas
Howard Martin
Will Enestvedt
Lisa Connell - Sun
Baios Thomas - Sun


################################
Original Message:
###############################

Howdy,

On the Sun web-site, it states quite clearly modifications to the st.conf
file must be made when you add-on the Storedge L9 - after some pretty
exhaustive searches I cannot find what those modifications should be. I
checked the list archives (but am not using a Exabyte, nor have cabling
problems etc [BTW - the htdig search implementation is much faster, nicely
done]).

I'm getting the timeout issue that is most probably due to the lack of
these st.conf mod's.

Syntax:
########################
Disconnected command timeout for Target 4.0
Apr 15 08:35:47 [serverName] unix: WARNING: ID[SUNWpd.glm.cmd_timeout.6016]
#########################


Does any one have rec's for those mods? Will veneratedly summarize.

#################################################



**********************************************
David JL Rieger
Information Engineering & Strategy
University of California, Berkeley
PH:	510.643.9666
FX:	510.643.9929
eMail: drieger@socrates.berkeley.edu

"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."
Robert Coveyou

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