heselton@admin.okanagan.bcc.CDN (Mike Heselton) (09/29/87)
Having seen very few complaints about LAVC clusters, I am beginning to believe
that we are the only site in the world with this problem. Can anyone make
us feel a little less alone.
We are running the following (tiny) cluster:
VAX-11/750 (boot node) MicroVax II
- 8mb Memory - 9mb Memory
- UDA-50 - Emulex QD32 disk Controller
- 2 RA81s - 2 Fujitsu M2361As
- DELUA - DEQNA
- 1 DMF32 - Emulex TC03 tape Coupler
- 2 DZ-11s - Fujitsu M244X tape drive
We are running LAVC under VMS V4.5A and have been experiencing the following
crashes on our MVII. As far as we can tell, at times when the disk traffic from
the 750 to the MVII gets high.
VAX/VMS System dump analyzer
Dump taken on 23-SEP-1987 10:59:45.23
INVEXCEPTN, Exception while above ASTDEL or on interrupt stack
System crash information
------------------------
Time of system crash: 23-SEP-1987 10:59:45.23
Version of system: VAX/VMS VERSION V4.5
VAXcluster node name: OKMV01
Reason for BUGCHECK exception:
INVEXCEPTN, Exception while above ASTDEL or on interrupt stack
Process currently executing: GOODALL
Current image file: OKCADM$DUA0:[SYS2.SYSCOMMON.][RAF]RAFPC.EXE
Current IPL: 20 (decimal)
General registers:
R0 = 00000014 R1 = 00140000 R2 = 80036320 R3 = 801D8950
R4 = 8032F600 R5 = 801CDA40 R6 = 8032F83E R7 = 00000001
R8 = 0000A000 R9 = 801DBD50 R10 = 8035E2E0 R11 = 801C9E00
AP = 00000000 FP = 000001CC SP = 7FFE7C0C PC = 80004862
PSL = 00140009
Processor registers: MicroVAX II
P0BR = 80714600 SBR = 008EA800 ASTLVL = 00000004
P0LR = 000006DF SLR = 00005280 SISR = 00000100
P1BR = 7FF2B600 PCBB = 00666878 ICCS = 00000040
P1LR = 001FFA13 SCBB = 008E7200 SID = 08000000
TODR = 98B4EE16 SYSTYPE= 01010000
ISP = 80465A00
KSP = 7FFE7C0C
ESP = 7FFE9E00
SSP = 7FFED032
USP = 7FF443FC
We first noticed these crashed when we installed the cluster and performed
backups of our disks to tape. On an unloaded system we cannot reliably
perform a BACKUP/BUFFER=5/NOCRC of the RA81's to the tape drive at 6250
bpi, the system crashes as above. We can perform the same backup at 1600
bpi with no problems. If we remove the BUFFER=5 we can, for the most part,
make it through the backup without a crash as long as the system is not
completely idle. (ie. I read my morning deluge of INFO-VAX mail, thank
god for the volume of mail) We have also noticed these crashes at other
times on and off.
We have 3 MVIIs and all 3 behave the same, we also have an 11/780 that we
have tried as a boot node for a diskless MVII but as soon as we get a few
users (students) trying to access the 780s disks we get the identical crash.
We don't believe it could be the FUJI disk drives or controller and have
a hard time thinking it could be the tape drive or controller, as we have
tried it with a diskless MVII with a TK50 as its only tape drive and it
still crashes with a few students running.
Has anyone out there seen or heard of any similar problems or even solutions?
We are planning to SPR the problem, as we have had it since spring when
we first setup our little cluster but we thought we would see if anyone
else had seen the problem first.
Thanks for any help you can give us.
Mike Heselton
Programmer/Analyst
Okanagan College
1000 K.L.O. Road
Kelowna, B.C., Canada
V1Y 4X8
HESELTON@ADMIN.OKANAGAN.BCC.CDNrussell@CINCOM.UMD.EDU ("CHRIS RUSSELL") (10/09/87)
(My apologies for posting, but I haven't gotten the knack of sending to CSNET yet.) >Having seen very few complaints about LAVC clusters, I am beginning to believe >that we are the only site in the world with this problem. Can anyone make >us feel a little less alone. > >We are running the following (tiny) cluster: > > [Description of Cluster] > >We are running LAVC under VMS V4.5A and have been experiencing the following >crashes on our MVII. As far as we can tell, at times when the disk traffic from >the 750 to the MVII gets high. Mike, First of all, "NO", you are not the only person struggling with an LAVC. I went through Hell and back again to get our 7 satellite LAVC up and running. Especially since our boot node is an 11/750 which is only supposed to handle 5 satellites... :-) I don't know if the problems we encountered are causing your difficulties, but here's a couple of things to look out for that we ran into: 1) The Rev Level on your Microvax DEQNA must be Rev E1 or later. We were running on C2 DEQNAs, and things appeared to be working. However, every once in a while, every satellite would lose touch with every other satellite, causing about 5 or 6 pages of console printout. This happenned several times an hour. Once we upgraded the DEQNAs, the problem went away. 2) The other thing I would suggest is that you get VMS 4.5C from DEC. That's what we're running. I really don't know the exact differences, but I do know that we are running 4.5C and it's running very smoothly now. Hope this helps. ~chris ----------------------------------------------------------------------- INFO-VAX: Love it or Leave it - But No More Meta-Discussions! Please! ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Christopher Russell ARPA: SYSMGR@KING.EE.UMD.EDU Operations Manager JNET: RUSSELL@UMCINCOM Computer Aided Design Lab UUCP: ...!seismo!umcp-cs!eneevax!russell University of Maryland FONE: (301)454-8886/454-8950 "If growing up were fun, I'd have done it already." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ------