To answer the question in the subject line - yes it can.
First, I want to thank the people who pointed out that V5.1A is not yet
released - we are actually running V5.1 (used to be 5.0A, that's how my
fingers got confused). As regards the actual question -
There were basically two problems here:
1) The system was not correctly identifying the 4 RAID partitions as 4
devices. This is because it uses the serial numbers provided by the
devices on a SCSI bus to differentiate between them, and the RAID was
supplying the same serial number for all 4 "devices". Hence the system
thought it had 4 different ways to get to a single device, not 4
devices. Solution: configure the RAID to provide one large partition as
a single "device". It was also necessary for the RAID to identify itself
as a disk (rather than "undefined" or "raid").
2) Although I was aware of hwmgr, I didn't realize how much information
was retained about devices that were no longer on the system, or whose
parameters had changed. Hence, changing configuration parameters on the
RAID and then doing "hwmgr -scan scsi" was not enough to replace all the
old attributes with new ones. Solution: take the RAID off the system,
use "hwmgr -show component" to locate the hardware ID for the RAID
(it'll still be there even though the RAID is not), and delete old
information using "hwmgr -delete component -id hardware-ID" and "hwmgr
-delete scsi -did SCSI-ID". Configure the RAID properly and connect it
to the XP-1000, then do "hwmgr -scan scsi" to get the correct new
attributes.
After taking care of these things, there was no difficulty using
disklabel and newfs to partition the RAID "disk" and make file systems
on it.
Thanks for the advice,
Marian Szebenyi
The original message was:
>
> 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 Wed Jul 25 2001 - 18:05:05 NZST