[comp.dcom.lans] GPIs & Novell -- part 2

gribble@cica.indiana.edu (07/20/90)

This is a follow-up to my 1st posting asking for help in curing our sick
Model 80 Novell server.  1st, I want to thank all who sent me mail directly
including Andrew Cress, Bob Krupczak, Jim Beers, and Alan Strassberg.

The Saturday (7/14) after I posted here the server had what I would call
a "hard" crash.  It began w/ a series of error messages that were firsts
for me:
Hot Fix turned off on drive 0 (volume SYS)
 then several
Write Error: dir = \ file = <somefile> vol = SYS:
 then
WARNING: FATAL DIR ERROR ON VOL SYS: FAT SECTOR xxx
followed by some more write errors

After this barrage of messages the server would not boot and Vrepair would
lock up.  So, I:

-pulled drive, controller and memory and put them in another 80
-did a low-level format on the drive
-compsurfed the drive
-replaced BICC card w/ 3c523 that I knew was good
-installed a new, re-gened version of Netware
-restored backed-up files (all 55,000 of them, thank god for the Maynstream 
 2200 which worked flawlessly and quickly)

That was 3 days ago, and since then no problems, but I'm keeping my fingers
crossed.  To summarize all of the messages I received and my own experience--
the GPIs can be caused by just about anything in the server, on the net, or
in a workstation. 
--
**************************************************************************
* Steve Gribble  (812) 855-9172              gribble@cica.cica.indiana.edu
* Systems Manager, Inst. of Social Research  swg@iumail.ucs.indiana.edu
* Dept. of Sociology, Indiana University     gribble@iubacs