Still problems with "degraded" drives

[Ayman Altounji]

Definitively changing the disks doesn't solve anything !!!!! In my case, the disks in the ML 530 were working wel with SA 431 since months... As I needed more space, I decided to break this 'winning team' and add a second disk cage with this new "on paper wonderful" SA 53xx... I thought our servers deserve it... 2 days after, the diks -the old ones as the new ones- were all flagged as degraded... Changing the disks will put your disks in green only for a few hours... Just the time for a walk...

I have a dream: sometimes somewhere Compaq would admit there is a problem... and stop talking about third party, other manufacturers hardware faults...

Kind regards

Philippe

[Ayman Altounji]

I've phoned with compaq for the problem that was posted by EDBU here above, they told me that there is a problem with the threshold trigger switches on the hard drives itselfs???? The solution they gave me for eventually solving the problem was the do an upgrade of the firmware of the smartctrl an dthe hard drives, if this didn't solved the problem they told me to replace all the disks (12 in total ). The server at our customer is also a production machine so it is not so evident to replace al 12 drives knowing that the problem will not be solved. What I think is that compaq doesn't have a solution for this problem.
I hope that we are getting a quick respons of Compaq for this problem, because our customer is getting very furious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jove

[Ayman Altounji]

On the SURVEY.NLM abend issue, last night I back-rev'd CPQRAID.HAM to the previous version (went from v1.05 back to v1.00). This did not solve the abend problem. I'm now thinking it might be related to an updated SERVER.EXE that was installed as part of Novell's OS5FT2A update. I will probably back-rev SERVER.EXE tonight as well and see what happens.

On the degraded drives, it appears that the problem is purely "cosmetic", more of a nuisance issue. The "degraded" drives are functioning perfectly. Not saying this isn't a serious issue that needs to be fixed, but I can live with it while Compaq works on a fix for it. Cpq gave me 3 options: Replace all the drives with Quantums, one at a time (not acceptable); Replace the 53xx controller with a 4200; or wait for the fix. I guess I will wait.

-dave

[Ayman Altounji]

Try upgrading the firmware on the drives ....

[Ayman Altounji]

A fix for the degraded drives has been found. Please download and apply SP16277 from <>.

Have a nice day,

Mike

[Ayman Altounji]

Installed the new softpaq last weekend, problem does seem to be fixed. SURVEY.NLM does still abend the server through.

[Ayman Altounji]

About the SURVEY.NLM issue:

Most of the time it is caused by a corrupt Survey.idi file or one of the other Survey files. Typically, this condition can be fixed by deleting SYS:\SYSTEM\SURVEY.* and then reinstalling the Survey utility using the SINSTALL.NLM. Some rare instance require deleting SYS:\SYSTEM\SURVEY.* plus the SYS:\SYSTEM\COMPAQ\ and SYS:\SYSTEM\CPQMGMT\ directories, reinstalling the Insight Manager Agents and then reinstalling the Survey utility.

If the above steps to not work then one can attempt to determine if some other software module is causing the problem. This can be done by not loading 3rd party software such as Tape Backup, Anti-Virus etc. upon startup of the server.

As another troubleshooting step, it is possible to start SURVEY in debug mode to determine where in the SURVEY process the abend is occurring. To start SURVEY in debug mode on a netware server, use the "-x" option.

Example: load survey -x

The "-x" option will cause SURVEY to output to the console screen what it is currently doing. When the server abends, get into the debugger by pressing and holding the following 4 keys simultaneously "SHIFT"-"ALT"-"SHIFT"-"ESC". Once in the debugger use the "v" command to switch to the SURVEY Debug screen and look at the SURVEY debug output. This may help determine where the abend is occurring within SURVEY.