shutdown problem for rx3600

[donna hofmeister]

i've got a rx3600 (11.31, of course) that always crashes on shutdown -r.  

when i was first made aware of the problem, the system would actually get into a crash-fail-to-dump loop that was only resolved by powercycling the system.  the powercycle always resolved the issue (albeit unelegantly) and the system would come up as expected.  we manually booted (hpux> boot /stand/current/vmunix) over the weekend thinking the system was confused about what kernel to boot from.  that only marginally helped since the system still crashes on shutdown but at least now it produces a crashdump (see attached).

to me, this crashdump looks like there's a hardware problem -- but nothing is raising a red flag.

i noticed the (dire :-) warning about USB driver in the crashinfo file.  could that be it?  the driver is old (C.01.05.08).  the HAA boot device is USB:

Primary bootpath : 0/6/0/0/0/0/1/0/0/0.0x0.0x4000000000000000 (/dev/rdisk/disk3)
HA Alternate bootpath : 0/0/2/1.0x0.0x10 (/dev/deviceFileSystem/Usb/MassStorage/dsk/disk@hp-1008+294=A60020000001)

the system has been recently patched with the latest support bundle, fwiw.

any ideas?

[Bill Hassell]

Defintely get that bad USB driver out of there. And unless you have a goiod reason for the USB path in HAA path, use setboot to set HAA to real boot path.

Also, latest patch bundle? That would be Sep 2012 for QPK, Feature and HWE. I don't see recent ARPA/TCP cumulative patch in the crashinfo list (PHNE_41436) but it may not be reported.

The double panic may indeed point to a hardware error. Connect to the (real) console and get a list of the last 10-20 entries in the SL (hint: SL, then E for error logs, and F for forward progress).  That may provide a better clue as to what is going on.

[donna hofmeister]

the both system logs look clean.

i'm arranging for the latest USB driver to be installed and we'll see if that brings us any joy.

about setboot...i've notes that say do "setboot -h <primary boot disk>" but is this is for pa-risc boxes only?  does it work for itaniums as well?

about the patches....i spent an entire minute (ha!) looking at the list of patches in the latest bundle and it sure looks to me that the latest arpa patch (for example and since we're using it as a guinea pig) is NOT included.  i suspect i missed something...but....

[Bill Hassell]

setboot -h <legacy hardware path, lunpath hardware path or a persistent dsf>

No difference between PA and IA as far as setboot is concerned. It is just setting stable storage on the system board.

As far as PHNE_41436, oops -- that should have been PHNE_41617, 41714 or 42017 for 11.31 (41436 is for 11.23). The ARPA cumulative patch is full of fixes for panics and other networking issues. But you have the second most recent so you should be OK. There are warnings for 41714 as well as its successor. For 41714 (which you have), it is only a problem when you have HP-UX Transport SRP installed. Check with:

    swlist -l bundle HPUXTransportSRP

If nothing is found, then 41714 is OK.

Your best bet is to look at the SL logs.

[donna hofmeister]

an update...

updating the usb driver has helped....somewhat.  at least now the box doesn't crash while shutting down.

it still won't reboot on it's own without a powercycle.  (don't ask for console log...it didn't get captured this time around...)

has anyone heard of /sbin/reboot actually failing?  i was wondering if we did:

1) shutdown (with no parms) and then

2) reboot

...would that be safe and helpful?

[Dennis Handly]

>has anyone heard of /sbin/reboot actually failing?

What part is failing? The shutting down or the booting?

[donna hofmeister]

shutdown (imo)

it reboots fine -- provided you powercycle the box.

if you do a typical/normal 'shutdown -r', it won't reboot on it's own.

you can see in previous console logs where it is (for example) closing lvm volumes, so i don't believe this is a problem with some rc script.  

[Dennis Handly]

>if you do a typical/normal 'shutdown -r', it won't reboot on it's own.

Where does it stop?  Anything in the shutdown log?

>you can see in previous console logs

I don't see those?

Have you tried disconnecting that USB disk?

[donna hofmeister]

the shutdownlog isn't helpful...just the normal one-liner.

anyhow, in this last go-round (where the usb driver was updated) we didn't get the shutdown dialog because the connection was lost.

the previous console/shutdown logs are a horror to look at and probably not helpful at this point.

afaik, the usb dvd drive is still connected.  but between updating the driver and modifying setboot, i don't think it's an issue any longer.  if you think otherwise, let me know.

i'm hoping for (yet another) reboot over the weekend....

[Dennis Handly]

>the shutdownlog isn't helpful... just the normal one-liner.

That means it got from shutdown(1m) to reboot(1m), so your suggestion probably wouldn't work?

>if you think otherwise, let me know.

Only if you have nothing better to do.  ;-)