Dear managers,
We have a 1-terabyte RAID system from AVIstor. It is set up as one
logical device split into four 245GB partitions. The partitions are
mapped to four host SCSI ID's, so the system should appear to the host
as four 245GB disks. On a Linux system, that's exactly what it does. We
can partition the "disks", create file systems on them, and use them.
Now, we take the RAID box over to an XP-1000 running Tru64 5.1A (with
the latest patch kit) and connect it to an Ultra160 SCSI adapter (which
works fine with a single disk drive). The computer sees 4 devices on the
SCSI bus from the SRM console or using scu, just as it should. However,
disklabel behaves strangely. It seems to be necessary to use the "-n"
(non-bootable disk) flag. OK, I don't mind that. Then, changing the
label on one "disk" seems to change the label on the others also. And
"disklabel -r" doesn't seem to actually read the disk, or at least not
always - I seem to be getting a previous version back. Anyway, some sort
of disk label gets written and I proceed to try to create a file system
with newfs. The process runs, with its usual messages about the size of
the file system, super-blocks, etc., but finishes with an error: "cg0:
bad magic number" and the file system is not useable.
I tried changing various parameters on the RAID controller - nothing
helped, although I could make things worse. Finally, I went back to the
original configuration, as far as I could tell. But, the response of the
XP-1000 is not the same. Now, it thinks there are only two devices on
the SCSI bus (there should be four), and they cannot be accessed by
disklabel, or dd (which used to work). scu sees two devices but cannot
switch to either of them, even though I have done the appropriate
MAKEDEV to make the device special files.
Finally, we put the RAID system back on the Linux machine, where it
works just fine. The SCSI adapter on the Linux box is an Adaptec 39160,
which I believe is essentially the same as the adapter on the XP-1000
(which shows up as Adaptec AIC-7899 to the SRM console).
Anyone out there with experience in using RAID other than the ones sold
by Compaq with Tru64? Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Marian Szebenyi
MacCHESS, Cornell U.
Received on Tue Jul 24 2001 - 15:42:39 NZST