[comp.sys.next] Problems with opticals, and npd

cattelan@mermaid.micro.umn.edu (Russell Cattelan) (04/18/91)

I have had two pressing problems bothering me lately and I am wondering if
anyone has some suggestions?


First we have had a few people (including myself) that have had
problems with the opticals disk not being reconized by the drive
anymore. Basically what happens is that when the disk is put in the
drive, it spins it up and then imediately spins it down and ejects it.

I really would like do get this data back.
Is there anyway to do something like a fsck on the disk to try and
repair it? One disk we even tried to format it, but since we can't
even get the machine to reconize the disk we haven't been able to get
to the format part.


The other problem is with "Edit" and printing everytime I try to print
a file from the edit program I get this message in /usr/adm/lpd-errors

Apr 16 09:05:59 leghorn npd[1062]: /usr/ucb/lpr of _Object.rtf - RTF -
 -  /Nex
tLibrary/Documentation/NextDev/Summaries/01_ClassSummary/CommonClasses
exited st
atus = 1
Apr 16 09:06:18 leghorn npd[1062]: /usr/ucb/lpr of _List.rtf - RTF -
-  /NextL
ibrary/Documentation/NextDev/Summaries/01_ClassSummary/CommonClasses
exited stat
us = 1

So far this is only happening with edit, other applications seem to
work fine. Going into /usr/spool/appkit and lpr`ing the file
directly works so it doesn't seem to be a bad postscript file.

I am not using the standard printing package, so I though it may be a
problem with lpr but since it only breaks with edit and the setup work
just fine under 1.0, I was wondering if this is a know bug in npd or edit?


-Russell Cattelan
cattelan@cs.umn.edu

pbiron@keynes.ucsd.edu (Paul Biron) (04/20/91)

In article <1991Apr18.034258.18830@cs.umn.edu> cattelan@mermaid.micro.umn.edu (Russell Cattelan) writes:
>
>First we have had a few people (including myself) that have had
>problems with the opticals disk not being reconized by the drive
>anymore. Basically what happens is that when the disk is put in the
>drive, it spins it up and then imediately spins it down and ejects it.
>
>I really would like do get this data back.
>Is there anyway to do something like a fsck on the disk to try and
>repair it? One disk we even tried to format it, but since we can't
>even get the machine to reconize the disk we haven't been able to get
>to the format part.
>
>-Russell Cattelan
>cattelan@cs.umn.edu

There have been a couple of posts about this lately.  I, too, have
had this happen.  I don't know if this is what is causing your
problem, but its always the cause when it happens to me.

On the underside of the floptical, there is a balck decal (sp?)
with the NeXT logo on it.  I have a disk where this decal is starting
to come off.  As it does so, it bunches up, and this causes the
drive to spit it out.  I guess the extra 2mils of thickness make
a difference.  Whenever it happens, I just press the decal back
down and all works fine.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Biron     garp!pbiron@keynes.ucsd.edu    (can have NeXT attachments)
SnUG/SIGHaCK        pbiron@ucsd.edu           (normal net mail)

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
 Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
                         --Groucho Marx

preston@LL.MIT.EDU (Steven Preston) (04/22/91)

>>>>> In article <1991Apr18.034258.18830@cs.umn.edu>, cattelan@mermaid.micro.umn.edu (Russell Cattelan) writes:

> ... we have had a few people (including myself) that have had
> problems with the opticals disk not being reconized by the drive
> anymore. Basically what happens is that when the disk is put in the
> drive, it spins it up and then imediately spins it down and ejects
> it.

> I really would like do get this data back.  Is there anyway to do
> something like a fsck on the disk to try and repair it? 

You can fsck an optical disk by saying
   fsck <options> /dev/r0d0a
(to a shell) with the optical drive empty.  The OS will prompt you to
enter an optical disk.

Same goes for initializing; say
  disk -l <new disk label> -i /dev/rod0a
with the drive empty.  See the disk(8) man page.

However, I had an optical go south, and fsck was unable to repair it
to a mountable state.  fsck gave an error (something like UNABLE TO
WRITE BLOCK n) every time I ran it.  The OS1.0 reference manual gave
me the advice "see a guru" for this error message.

Anyway, I was able to write a program that retrieved all but at most
8 of the files on the disk (The disk had stuff ftp'ed off the net on
it, none of it irreplaceable, so I didn't back it up).

If you continue to have troubles, let me know and I'll send you my
code.
--
Steve Preston  (preston@ll.mit.edu)