wood@acf4.NYU.EDU (David Wood) (12/19/89)
We recently upgraded to 3.2 on our 4D/80GT. Last week we began noticing unrecovered disk errors on the disk with / and /usr. So I read the man page for fx and used fx to find the bad blocks. My mistake was using fx to forward the bad blocks while the system was up and running. The resulting sympton was that we got disk I/O errors during 'find ...' . I double checked the man page and nowhere does it say you can't do this. BE WARNED that you are supposed to use the stand alone version of fx when the system is down of course. Incidentally, we have an ESDI drive. While discussing this with SGI, one of there field service guys told me that when upgrading to 3.2, you are supposed to re-format your disks. "Really, it didn't say that anywhere in the installation guide", says I. He said it was only recently discovered that this was necessary. Has anyone else heard anything like this? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- David Wood wood@acf2.nyu.edu New York University ...!uunet!cmcl2!wood 212-998-3029 "Brain. Brain. What is brain?" Kara the Eymorg, "Spock's Brain", Stardate 5432.3 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
markb@denali.sgi.com (Mark Bradley) (12/20/89)
In article <17280030@acf4.NYU.EDU>, wood@acf4.NYU.EDU (David Wood) writes: > > We recently upgraded to 3.2 on our 4D/80GT. Last > week we began noticing unrecovered disk errors on the > disk with / and /usr. So I read the man page for fx > and used fx to find the bad blocks. My mistake was using > fx to forward the bad blocks while the system was up > and running. The resulting sympton was that we got disk > I/O errors during 'find ...' . I double checked the man page > and nowhere does it say you can't do this. BE WARNED that you > are supposed to use the stand alone version of fx when the > system is down of course. Incidentally, we have an ESDI drive. > While discussing this with SGI, one of there field > service guys told me that when upgrading to 3.2, you are > supposed to re-format your disks. "Really, it didn't say that > anywhere in the installation guide", says I. He said > it was only recently discovered that this was necessary. > Has anyone else heard anything like this? > No, no, no. One does not need to reformat when upgrading s/w. An mkfs is nice once in a great while to de-frag the filesystem in a reload from tape, but you do NOT need to reformat your drive when upgrading s/w. Key word is tape--make sure you are backed up on tape first. You CAN forward bad blocks using the run-time version of fx, but of course in trying to read data from a bad track (you know it's become bad because you get errors trying to read it, right?) , you will get errors. You have to read the data to forward it, naturally. markb -- Mark Bradley "Faster, faster, until the thrill of I/O Subsystems speed overcomes the fear of death." Silicon Graphics Computer Systems Mountain View, CA 94039-7311 ---Hunter S. Thompson ******************************************************************************** * Disclaimer: Anything I say is my opinion. If someone else wants to use it, * * it will cost... * ********************************************************************************
dabay@BRL.MIL ("Dave M. Dabay", SGI|stay) (12/22/89)
It should not be necessary to reformat your disks before, load/reloading new releases, however it is a good Idea to back things up just in caes.. But we have done numerous os upgrades without reformating and don't have any unusual disk problems/errors......