LH 3r Bios problems?

[James_49]

Hi all
I've acquired an LH 3r(Clean and no OS)to use while I upgrade other serveres. I don't know what the raid configuration was but it has 12x 9gb disks and booted fine to a Netserver setup CD. This recommended a Bios (4.06.43pl)upgrade, which I gladly let it perform. Problem is, I've now got a flashing red (top)led control panel light, it won't enter (f2) setup and reports 4 disks have failed. All the disks are showing green lights. It will go in to Raid config but won't boot to the setup cd. Has the Bios flash upset the raid config or has the bios killed the machine? I should have followed the rule "If it ain't broken don't change it" but.....well help needed! Also hp lh3 product info needed or has this been stopped. Thanks.

[Marino Meloni_1]

I would suggest you to perform first a clear cmos (jumper inside the server on the system board), then a reset managment(shutdown the server, disconnect powersupply cable, lan cable, any serial or parallel cable, let it disconnected for few minuts then reboot.).
than chek if the post pass, if it still hang, check if it hang when checking hdd(in fact if a hdd is not responding, it can hang the scsi bus until a time out is passed ), in case you could see that the hang is caused by a hdd, just look at the light on the hdd:one green led indicate the power, the second led indicate the activity, if one hdd have the two leds lighted for a while at boot time, this hdd may be suspec, remove it form the HotSwap tray
bye
marino

[Brian Peters]

I think that one of the hdds that failed is hanging the SCSI bus. I suggest disconnecting the SCSI cables from the controller and see if you can enter the Netraid Utility (Cntrl - M). Then you should be able to identify the 4 hdds that failed.

Disconnect all but one of the failed hdds and reconnect the SCSI cable. Reboot the system and then try to back into the netraid utility and see if it hangs. If it doesn't hang the add one more hdd and repeat the process until you found the hdd that is hanging the bus.

When you identified the bad hdd and you still have more than one hdd in the failed condition, you could force the drives online and run in a degraded state until you are able to rebuild a new drive.

[Brian Peters]

One more thing....

When you flashed your bios the netraid's channel B defaults as disable for netraid. You will need to enable for netraid on the channel in F2 setup. Also, you may to check to see a message about "Unresolve Mismatch" or "Mismatch between NVRAM and disk" when the netraid banner or any information about the netraid config will be helpful for us to help you resolve your issue.

[James_49]

Thanks for the advice.
Right....situation now is that I've got into the bios and enabled the B-channel on the raid card. Select (f6) scsi select to see the three channels a/b/c. Here I can see all the hdd, 6 on two of the channels and being correctly recognised. Bios though does not see any drivers until after the netraid scan nor does Ctrl-m raid utils see any disks. I've tried every tab in raid utils but it won't recognise any drives. It won't create a new array as it suggests that no drives are present! Any suggestions?

[Greg Carlson]

James,

Are you using the embedded NetRaid or do you have a PCI NetRaid card? It sounded like you set both of your channels to SCSI so you wouldn't see any hdds in Ctrl-M. Boot into F2 setup..

On the main menu you should see Integrated HP NetRAID as Enabled
Included SCSI_A Channel Yes
Included SCSI_B Channel Yes

F10 to save,
Then boot to Ctrl-M and go to objects and adapter. Do you have a choice between adapter 0 and adapter 1? If you do look for hdd's on both.
Ciao,
Greg

[Greg Carlson]

James,

One more point.. For cabling.. On the I/O board there is SCSI A, SCSI B and then SE SCSI. SCSI A and B are on the edge of the i/o board behind the fans and SESCSI is on the top of the board running parellel to the PCI Slots.. SE SCSI should not be used if you are running NetRaid on SCSI A,B as SCSI B and SE SCSI are not seperate controllers.

Ciao,
Greg

[Brian Peters]

When you selected for SCSI select, are the hard drives connected to a SCSI card on a PCI slot? I am not sure if you are testing the drives on another controller.

Are there any other cards in the server?

When you go into the netraid utility, do you see ID 5 label "PROC" on both Channel 0 and 1?

Recheck the SCSI connectors on the cable for any bent pins. As another test, make sure that cables are properly seated the embedded SCSI A and B off the I/O board. Go into F2 setup and disable the netraid. This will enable the embbedded symbios controller and you should be able to see the hard drives when you go into the Symbios utility .

If the drives banner then that will indicate that the embbedded SCSI controller is working fine and that the source of the problem is caused by enabling the Netraid. I would suggest trying to reflash the netraid firmware and try again.