SUMMARY: CAM errors?

From: McAully, Neil \(x7224\) <"McAully,>
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 15:21:40 +1000

Many thanks to responses from

alan_at_nabeth.cxo.com
Ian.Lawrence_at_aloca.com.au
and Dr. Tom Blinn (tpb_at_doctor.zk3.dec.com)
My original question:

Dear list,
>
> Whilst doing an installupdate to DU 4.0D from CD I got a large number of
> errors (about one every 60 seconds) as follows:
>
> ss_perform_timeout
> timeout on disconnected request
> cam_logger bus 0 target 5 lun 0
> SCSI abort has been performed
>
> bus 0 target 5 lun 0 is the CD drive. The installupdate worked OK; I am
> running quite happily on the system. My question is (are):
>
> Is this something I need to worry about? Should I log a hardware call on
it?
> uerf reports nothing.
>
> System is an alpha 4100 running (now!) DU4.0D patch kit #3.
>
The responses seemed to suggest that there was indeed likely to be a
hardware problem.
Once again though, the definitive response from Dr. Tom Blinn (which also
covers why there were no records found by uerf). I have used this suggestion
and generated error log records which I can now use to log a hardware fault
with Compaq.
He wrote:

During an installupdate, the system's error loggers (syslogd and binlogd)
are
disabled. So the SCSI errors were not logged. That's why you can't find any
indication of them with "uerf" (or any other error log analysis tool), since
they never got logged.
You have a problem with your CDROM drive. I'd suggest you take a standard CD
such as the one that comes in the base OS kit, mount it on a convenient
mount
point (e.g., /mnt or /cdrom), then use a utility such as "find" to get a
list
of the files on the CD, then sort the list of files on some key other than
the
directory name (for instance, run the list through a shell script that
outputs
for each file name the basename of the file and then the full path name, so
you can sort it on the first field, then run that through awk so that you
get
just the full path, and use that sorted on file name list as the driver for
the next step). Then run through the sorted list and read the file's
contents
and metadata with "sum" and "ls -l", and do this a few times; on the first
pass just record the results, on the second and subsequent passes, compare
the
results with first pass.
If you don't get any SCSI abort errors (like you were seeing during the
update) and you don't get any result differences (from the "sum" and "ls
-l")
then your CDROM drive is probably healthy. But if you generate a raft of CAM
errors or mismatches, you've got a problem.
Cable length, bus termination, malfunctioning device, one of the above..
Tom
---------------------------------------------------------------------
This correspondence is for the named person's use only. It may
contain confidential or legally privileged information or both.
No confidentiality or privilege is waived or lost by any
mistransmission. If you receive this correspondence in error, please
immediately delete it from your system and notify the sender. You
must not disclose, copy or rely on any part of this correspondence
if you are not the intended recipient.

Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender,
except where the sender expressly, and with authority, states them to
be the views of Vodafone.
Received on Wed May 12 1999 - 05:24:52 NZST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Wed Nov 08 2023 - 11:53:39 NZDT