[comp.sys.apollo] SCSI-problems on 9000/425s

rog@speech.kth.se (Roger Lindell) (06/06/91)

Hello,

we have recently acquired five 9000/425s machines and have installed one
Micropolis 1598-15 1.2 Gb disk in each of them. This configuration works
fine except for a few cases, and these are:

1. If I try to duplicate a directory tree on the same disk as the original
directory tree using the command 'cp -opPrs old_dir new_dir' the machine
may crash, and if it does crash it takes about 20 minutes for it to get down
to the mnemonic debugger level. If I have the machine in service mode I get
an error code that either is 80380018 [no resources available (OS/SCSI
manager)] or 80080003 [disk controller time-out (OS/disk manager)].

2. If there is heavy use on the disk an error might get logged that says,
if you use lsyserr, "disk driver logic error (OS/disk manager)" and also
"disk error recovered by some device action (OS/Recovered Disk Error
Manager)". This has happened on 3 out of 5 machines which makes it, in my
opinion, unlikely that there is a hardware error. BTW this error does
not crash the machine.

3. We added a WangDAT to one of our 9000/425s and used SCSI-device 1 and
are therefore able to use rbak/wbak with device m to access the DAT. The
strange thing here is that if I make a wbak to the DAT with files from
the local disk the machine is liable to hang and I get the error code
80080003 [disk controller time-out (OS/disk manager)] and the same thing
happens if I rbak some files that were taken from one of our other disks
to the local disk. This error does not happen if I do rbak/wbak to/from
the other disks in our network, or if make a large wbak that includes all
our disks, including the disk on the machine that has the DAT.

Has anybody out there experienced the same thing or something like it,
and is there a solution to our problems?

Many thanks in advance,
--
Roger Lindell			rog@speech.kth.se
Phone: +46 8 790 75 73		Fax: +46 8 790 78 54
Dept. of Speech Communication and Music Acoustics
Royal Institute of Technology	Sweden

bep@quintro.uucp (Bryan Province) (06/07/91)

In article <rog.676192085@system> rog@speech.kth.se (Roger Lindell) writes:
>
>we have recently acquired five 9000/425s machines and have installed one
>Micropolis 1598-15 1.2 Gb disk in each of them. This configuration works
>fine except for a few cases, and these are:
>
>1. If I try to duplicate a directory tree on the same disk as the original
>directory tree using the command 'cp -opPrs old_dir new_dir' the machine
>may crash, and if it does crash it takes about 20 minutes for it to get down
>to the mnemonic debugger level. If I have the machine in service mode I get
>an error code that either is 80380018 [no resources available (OS/SCSI
>manager)] or 80080003 [disk controller time-out (OS/disk manager)].
>
>2. If there is heavy use on the disk an error might get logged that says,
>if you use lsyserr, "disk driver logic error (OS/disk manager)" and also
>"disk error recovered by some device action (OS/Recovered Disk Error
>Manager)". This has happened on 3 out of 5 machines which makes it, in my
>opinion, unlikely that there is a hardware error. BTW this error does
>not crash the machine.

We had similar kinds of errors on an external SCSI disk on our 400t.  It was a
third party drive but I called Apollo to have them explain the errors anyway.
They said that it corresponds to a bad spot on the disk.  So I used invol and
marked the address given, by lsyserr, as bad.  I was under the mispresumption
that the SCSI disks took care of badspots by themselves.  Well they do at invol
time but any further errors have to be logged in the badspot list.  We haven't
had any problems since.  If your lsyserr gives you any address (especially
repeating ones) try logging them in the badspot list, run a long salvol, and try
running for a while to see what happens.

Also check that the end of your SCSI chain is terminated correctly.  Make sure
that everything is "single ended" type of SCSI.  Also it seems, at least on our
400t, that no terminator is needed internally nor on the internal disk; just on
the external port or on any external device(s).

(BTW, the drive and third party vendor are the ones I was complaining about
several months ago, so everything is fine now.)

-- 
--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--
Bryan Province -Glenayre Corp., Quincy, IL- quintro!bep@lll-winken.llnl.gov
             "I tried putting instant coffee in the microwave,
                I almost went back in time."  - Steven Wright