Thanks for two quick responses:
alan_at_nabeth.cxo.dec.com (Alan Rollow)
tpb_at_zk3.dec.com (Dr. Tom Blinn)
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**** My scu timeout question:
I'm trying to do a low-level format (using scu) of a 23 GB Seagate
disk drive model number ST423451W on an AlphaStation 255/300 system
running DU V4.0D (Rev. 878). The SCSI controller is a KZPDA-AA PCI.
There is one additional 23 GB drive on this SCSI bus.
scu has timed out on me twice at the 4 hour mark.
How can I prevent this timeout from occuring?
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**** Summary of the answer:
Thanks to Dr. Tom Blinn for the answer:
The scu utility does indeed have a SCSI timeout global variable.
This can be set to 'infinite' like this:
scu> set cam timeout 0xffffffff
This variable is documented in the scu help facility; however, I
did not find it since I was searching the subtopics of 'format'
rather than 'set'. In retrospect, a 'grep timeout /sbin/scu.hlp'
would have pointed me in the right direction.
Thanks again to Dr. Tom Blinn for the quick and helpful response.
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**** Dr. Tom Blinn's response follows:
I passed your question about "scu" format commands timing out on your 23GB
Seagate drives to the person who maintains the "scu" utility, and he wrote
back that:
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 09:58:18 -0400
From: Robin
Subject: Re: Does "scu" time out a format after four hours?
> That might not be enough time for some large drives. See customer complaint
> attached. I don't know whether this is a "scu" issue or something down in
> the SCSI CAM layer. And I'm only poking you 'cause you're the "scu" wizard
> these days, maybe I should be asking, say, James Smart or Fred Knight..
Hi Tom,
Yes, I am the "right" person to ask when it comes to 'scu' issues...
and "Yes", 'scu' deos have a 4 hour timeout on a FORMAT command.
I have attempted to define a "worse case" timeout for every SCSI command,
mainly to avoid hangs and allow test scripts to continue appropriately.
Obviously, we have never bumped into a drive which takes this long
to FORMAT, even with the certification pass some drives perform.
The is a global timeout value the user can specify via:
scu> set cam timeout value
This is documented as part of the 'scu' "help" facility. I never
got around to implemeting per SCSI command timeouts, since the defaults are
normally adequate (never been a need).
The "value" above is specified in seconds. Setting this to 0xffffffff
makes it an infinite timeout (i.e., no timeout). Perhaps I'll make this the
default, since this is not the first time we've bumped into this (I increased
the timeout a couple years ago).
=============================================
Thanks again,
--
Karl Amrhein UCO/Lick Observatory
ksa_at_ucolick.org University of California Santa Cruz
Received on Tue Apr 14 1998 - 18:40:30 NZST