Need help with hardware error:

From: Tom Fenn <tom_at_spirit.gcrc.upenn.edu>
Date: Thu, 05 Mar 1998 09:07:20 -0500

One of our Alpha 255's (dunix 4.0b) will intermittently panic.
So far this only occurs when there is always some heavy disk I/O
going on (moving >100MB's to/from tape or CD)
but it doesn't always occur when heavy disk I/O is occurring.

Sometimes I can back up /usr/users, and sometimes I can't. So
far, it's never panicked while I was backing up the partitions on
rz0. This leads me to suspect that the rz1 disk is going bad.

However, a couple of times that this has happened, the system
had a hard time finding the boot record on the first drive. This makes
me suspicious of rz0.

The fact that I'm maybe seeing trouble with both disks makes me suspect
that the drive controller is the culprit.

So, like the hero of a bad crime drama, I have many suspicions, and
no evidence. Can anyone give me any suggestions on how to narrow
this down further?

All of our systems are only about a year old. I'm very surprised that
I'm having any trouble of this sort already.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Fenn (tom_at_spirit.gcrc.upenn.edu)
Mass Spectrometry Facility Engineer phone: 215/573-9878
Center for Cancer Pharmacology fax: 215/573-9889
University of Pennsylvania
Received on Thu Mar 05 1998 - 15:07:43 NZDT

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