Hi,
As you probably already know, the DEC systems and options catalogue,
does not support 2 scsi cards in the personal workstations. In fact it
does not even support a raid card, it just says it supports 1 Q-logic
card. How is this so. After years of being able to stick multiple scsi
cards in unix boxes we are back to 1 all of a sudden.
Well my re-seller thought that this was just another DEC sales thing,
stop users buying workstations and using them as servers. Anyway many
attempts to get the second card to work, and then to load Elektroson
Gear software have reduced me to a pretzel. I have succeeded in getting
the operating system to load with two cards in the box, but I have to
disconnect everything from the second card at the time (ie the second
card just sits there, connecting anything to it seems to give the
installation a sure heart attack).
Having loaded the os (vis du4.0d), I can then put things on the second
controller, namely 4 narrow scsi2 tape drives, a narrow disk and also a
new Yamaha CD writer. Everything seems to work OK at this stage, even
though one of the exabytes comes up with 7 or 8 entries in the uerf.
Entries like -
tz30 at scsi3 target 6 lun 0 (LID=8)
tzb30 at scsi3 target 6 lun 1 (LID=9)
_()
tzc30 at scsi3 target 6 lun 2 (LID=10)
tzd30 at scsi3 target 6 lun 3 (LID=11)
tze30 at scsi3 target 6 lun 4 (LID=12)
tzf30 at scsi3 target 6 lun 5 (LID=13)
tzg30 at scsi3 target 6 lun 6 (LID=14)
tzh30 at scsi3 target 6 lun 7 (LID=15)
To get the second bus to function correctly I had to use a forced
perfect terminator. The second card is an identical Q-logic card which
has a 68 pin external connector, which is stepped down to 50 pin via a
68-50 scsi cable.
Most people are probably saying, well why don't you quit while your
ahead. That's not the attitude. Anyway when the gear software loads, it
seems to load without a hitch, it builds a few devices in /dev, like
/dev/gd0a, ..., /dev/gd0h, /dev/gd1a, ...etc., upto something like
/dev/gd10h. The load also puts its entry in the kernel configuration
file, rebuilds the kernel, installs the new kernel, and successfully
reboots. Well thats a start, but the second Q-logic comes in as -
isp1 at pci1000 slot 10
isp1: QLOGIC ISP1040B/V2
isp1: Firmware revision 5.27 (loaded_by console)
isp1: Fast RAM timing enabled.
scsi3 at isp1 slot 0
ie as scsi 3, which means that the devices on that scsi have logical
addresses of the order 3*8 + target id, ie 24 thro to 31. Well the gear
install only created devices upto gd10. So when the Gear software is
run, it reports
"No CD-Recording units found." Now I used mknod to create appropriate
character and block devices in /dev with major and minor numbers that
fitted the pattern of the ones created by Gear install, but these did
not work.
I even tried to access the CD-writer using the mount command and my gd24
device, but to no avail. Next I tried mounting using an rz24 device, at
this stage the workstation said thats enough and crashed. Something
happened to the kernel, or something that is accessed during boot,
because at this stage the installation became useless. Every boot
thereafter crashed before the login screen came up. I didn't try and
boot to single user, and swap the kernel for the pre Gear one. Instead I
did a new install, and copied back all the appropriate bits from a save
of the previous installation.
Questions:
(a) anyone know if there is something else I should be doing when using
mknod
(b) anyone know what the appropriate entry should be in the kernel
configuration file for the cd-writer (I don't have a copy of the one
Gear install generated available)
(c) anyone know of a scsi card combination that might work, ie adaptec
or something.
(d) when the thing crashes it would appear that its because of an
illegal memory access, to a novice like me it looks like it is trying to
access a buffer that doesn't exist.
(e) I wonder if anyone knows what is being corrupted so badly that it is
impossible to boot the machine using vmunix as the kernel.
Another strange problem was with the first scsi controller, in trying to
get it to control both the internal disk, and an external pedestal. My
read of the system manual indicated that one controller could not be
used to control both internal and external devices, ie one had to use a
separate controller for the pedestal. So the internal disk was pulled
out and the external disks are now used to boot from.
Dennis
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Dennis Macdonell | "Any idiot can face
em: mcdonell_at_auslig.gov.au | a crisis - its this
ph: 02 6201 4326 | day-to-day living
fax: 02 6201 4377 | that wears you out"
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Received on Wed Jun 10 1998 - 08:34:10 NZST