spl@cs.nps.navy.mil (steve lamont) (08/16/90)
A collegue of mine has a 4D/70GT that is acting up and is, unfortunately, not under warranty/maintenance due to budgetary constraints and the general cheapness of the government :-). The failure mode is essentially this: The system will crash, locked up solid, and have to be rebooted. When it reboots, a series of messages as follows appear: ip0d0 error: csr 4050 unrecovered 0x29 <error=sector not found> block 0 Drive status: <DRDY, ONCYL, UALIVE, URDY> [repeated several times with the block number incremented by 256 up to 2304] ip(0,0,8): can't read volume header couldn't determine fstype The machine, obviously, refuses to boot when this happens. The maddening part of this is that if left to itself, the problem goes away (for a while) and the system may be booted and used. However, the ratio of uptime to downtime is falling like a stricken falcon and the machine is effectively dead. It looks like a disk controller problem to me but I'll admit that I'm just guessing (in previous incarnations, my immediate reaction would be to call SGI field service but, as noted above, that really isn't an option at the present time). Any theories? Please email, since I'm sure the rest of the group won't be all that interested. I'll pass them on to my collegue. Maybe one of the departmental techies can solve the problem with some guidance. spl (the p stands for perplexed, perturbed, and pained, all at the same time...) -- Steve Lamont, SciViGuy -- (408) 646-2752 NPS Confuser Center, Code 0141/Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, CA 93940 "You're okay," said Honeysuckle. "The dogs like you." - Charles Bukowski, "How to Get Published"