Disk not seen by VMS

[EdgarZamora]

I'm either missing something obvious or I'm losing it...

ES45, OpenVMS 8.3, 6 local SCSI drives (DKA0 through DKA500) in drive cage, one SCSI adapter KZPCA. The console sees all 6 drives (see attached log)

If I boot from DKA0, DKA400 is not seen by VMS after the system is up (only 5 drives are seen). If I boot from DKA400 (I had done an image backup of dka0 to dka400 to ensure I could really access DKA400 and that it was working properly), VMS sees all 6 drives after the system is up.

Any help will be much appreciated.

Edgar

[Steven Schweda · Accepted solution]

Did you exclude DKA400 from
auto-configuration?

SYSMAN IO SHOW EXCLUDE

SYS$MANAGER:SYCONFIG.COM

[Hoff]

I'd change the label on DKA0: or on DKA400:; keep unique labels.

Poke around in the error log and see if anything interesting got logged.

I'd next probably pull the Fibre Channel adapters (as a test) and try this sequence again.

Further along, swap a couple of bricks, and see if the problem moves around, and swap out DKA400 for a known-good brick. On no evidence, I'd look at involving DKA300 and/or DKA400 in some swapping for no reason other than because they're identical. Make one different and you're rather more sure. With two identical bricks, uncertainty abounds.

Also try a second shelf, if you have one around. Bad shelves can be pretty weird.

I'm sure you've checked ECOs. There was a FC SCSI ECO within the past week or two, IIRC.

But do try changing the labels first. (And no, this should not cause the device to be ex-configured.)

You can use CDDVD /INQUIRE to get serial numbers out of the bricks, etc. SET COMMAND SYS$ETC:CDDVD$TOOLS, then CDDVD /INQUIRE ddcu: to get the data. There is also the SYS$ETC:SCSI_INFO tool as well. These can help ensure you're looking at what you think you are.

[EdgarZamora]

BULLSEYE Steven!

I don't know how that disk got excluded. Thanks!

$ mc sysman
SYSMAN> io show exclude

%SYSMAN-I-OUTPUT, command execution on node CLCC
%SYSMAN-I-IOEXCLUDE, the current permanent exclusion list is: JKB0,DKB100,DKB200
,JKA300,DKA400
SYSMAN> *EXIT*

[EdgarZamora]

SYSMAN> IO SHOW EXCLUDE

[EdgarZamora]

I had created this system from a backup I made of another system (DS25). For some reason that system had those device exclusions and they copied over to this new system. One of the pitfalls of copying over an old system disk instead of installing fresh from scratch.

[Steven Schweda]

I exclude my CD-writing drive because I don't
want it automatically served to the cluster.

I do that in SYS$MANAGER:SYCONFIG.COM, so
that I can use SYSMAN IO AUTOCONFIGURE /SELECT
on it later. SYSMAN IO AUTOCONFIGURE /EXCLUDE
is a little too permanent for my purposes.

I don't know what your excuse was (but you'd
better have a good one).