compata@cup.portal.com (David H Close) (09/01/89)
A customer is experiencing a troubling problem for which I don't have a ready solution. He is running SCO Xenix 286 release 2.1.3 using a Seagate 4096 disk. Sometimes, not always but too often, during reboot the system will repeatedly report hard disk errors on cylinder 1023 (last one). When this happens, the reboot does not succeed (at least, not within a reasonable time, like 10 minutes) and the only way out seems to be another reboot by cycling power. The reboot may fail several times in succession in exactly the same way. Of course, fsck gets run on the second and later reboots. When run, fsck gets to the point of examining the free list before the error messages appear. But then, eventually, on every occasion until now, the reboot succeeds without error, fsck reports no significant problems found, and he's back in business. The customer has tried powering-down for several minutes between boots. The problem does not seem to be dependent on the warmth of the disk, at least within a small margin. He has not powered down over night before rebooting (for fear that he will have insufficient time in the morning before the system must be used). Similar hard disk errors have never been reported after boot. I must say that, within my experience, all symptoms point to a hardware problem. However, on the chance that I'm wrong, here is his disk configuration. If anyone can suggest a reason why cylinder 1023 would only sometimes be accessed, or access would only sometimes fail, I and my customer will be very grateful. Current Hard Disk Drive: /dev/rhd00 +-------------+----------+---------+---------+-------+--------+ | Partition | Status | Type | Start | End | Size | +-------------+----------+---------+---------+-------+--------+ | 1 | Inactive | DOS | 1 | 1142 | 1142 | | 2 | Active | XENIX | 1143 | 9215 | 8073 | +-------------+----------+---------+---------+-------+--------+ Total disk size: 9216 tracks +----------------+----------------+------------+---+-------------+------------+ | Block Partition| Character Part.| Overwrite? | # | First Block | Last Block | | root | rroot | no, exists | 0 | 0| 57097| | scratch | rscratch | no, exists | 5 | 57098| 57155| | swap | rswap | no, exists | 1 | 57156| 67155| | recover | rrecover | no, exists | 6 | 67156| 67165| | | | no | 2 | -| -| | | | no | 3 | -| -| | | | no | 4 | -| -| | d1057all | rd1057all | no, exists | 7 | 0| 68619| +----------------+----------------+------------+---+-------------+------------+ 67166 blocks for devices, 1454 blocks reserved for bad tracks Thanks in advance for any help you can offer. Dave Close, Compata, Arlington, Texas PSTN 817/277-6767 compata@cup.portal.com -or- ..sun!portal!cup.portal.com!compata