info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (10/06/84)
From: Mike Iglesias <iglesias@uci-750a> We recently installed 3 RA81s on our 780. We already had an RM05 and an RP07 on the system, with the intention of getting rid of the RM05 soon. The RM05 is the system pack and the RP07 has the user files on it. When we added the mount stuff to SYSTARTUP.COM for the RA81s (2 drives in 1 structure, 1 for swap/paging), we added it before the RP07. When the system was booted, VMS claimed that the RA81's weren't on-line, even though they were. After SYSTARTUP.COM finished, a manual mount of the structures worked. We moved the mounts for the RA81s after the mount for the RP07 and the system booted fine. Does anybody know what is going on here? We had a power failure yesterday that took out the HDA on the RP07, so we restored all the users files on the 2 drive RA81 structure (we had planned to do that eventually), removed the RP07's mount from SYSTARTUP.COM, and booted the system. Well, VMS still can't mount the RA81s correctly. It still requires a manual mount command to get it to mount the structures. I find it hard to believe that there is some interaction involving the RP07 and the RA81s, but there is definately something strange going on here. A SHOW DEVICES shows PUA0 (the UDA-50 I presume) as being there, but VMS just can't mount the disks. Any suggestions/fixes would be greatly appreciated. We are currently running version 3.4 of VMS.
info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (10/06/84)
From: Richard Garland <OC.GARLAND%CU20B@COLUMBIA> Problem mounting RA81's: I think the problem is the startup time for the RA81's. It takes each disk a few seconds to check itself and initialize bad block pointers etc. In my startup file I put a WAIT 00:00:04.0 (i.e. 4 second wait) just before mounting the RA81 and have no problem. Mounting youe RP07 was probably giving you just enough time for the '81's to get ready. I don't know if I read somewhere to put that in or what but I did. We also run VMS V3.4. Rg -------
info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (10/08/84)
From: engvax!KVC@cit-vax Well, I don't know if this will fix the problem Mike Iglesias is having, but DEC does distribute VMS maintenance releases for a reason. There are a lot of bug fixes to the DSA drivers in the point releases since 3.4. I know that there are occasional problems going to new versions, but I always put them up ASAP, and in 5 years of heavy VMS experience, I have never had a problem with a new minor release that made me wish I had stayed with an earlier version. I think the thing to do here is upgrade to 3.7 and see if the problem is still there. I think going to new point releases is especially critical if you are running new hardware like DSA disks. There was a problem introduced by 3.6 which made it impossible to dismount and remount disks on a UDA under certain circumstances, but DEC was happy enough to send a patch over the remote diagnostics line well before 3.7 arrived with the fix. That was one case where a point release caused some trouble, but they did fix it without making us wait for 3.7. I guess I just think people should look into maintenance releases for bug fixes and maybe keep their machines more up-to-date. /Kevin Carosso engvax!kvc @ CIT-VAX.ARPA Hughes Aircraft Co.