fcms Error

[Uday_S_Ankolekar]

I've four Fiber Channel cards are on one of my N-Class box(HP-UX 11.00). One of them shows millions of 'Bad Rx char Count' when I run fcmsutil. This number is increasing every time I run fcmsutil.
I've replaced everything related to this device (Fiber channel card,Controller, cables ) But the problem remains. I'm not finding any disk problems. What could be the reason..?

[Erik Tong]

Bad Character counts are typically hardware problems, usually a failure with the optic components. Most fibre HBAs have replacable optic modules called GBIC or GLM, depending on the type of card you have. FC switches also use GBIC optics. (The HP FC hub does not have modules to swap out, so if they fail, I guess you are out of luck.)
Have you tried swapping any of the optics out? There is a chance that the "new" replacements are bad as well. You might try to exchange them into working ports to see if the errors follow the hardware.

Also, the bad characters are thrown out at the FC adapter, so you won't see data errors. You will see I/O retries in the form of slower I/O.

[Michael Tully]

Hi Uday,

What is plugged into the other end?
Straight into a switch or SAN? Try
changing the port with another F/C
card and see if the problem remains or
goes to the other card.

Michael

[Uday_S_Ankolekar]

Hi,

It could be a hardware problem. I tried swaping all the components related to this device but not getting any success.

The Fiber runs directly between Server and FC1010.
Infact when we changed the fiber card Server started behaving iratically. Server was not ready to come up and then it was unable to recoginize some of the disks and so on.
Any documentation or case studies would be a great help

[G.Kumar]

Hi

I have faced one problem like this.NOt exaclty same.One of my fibre card gave some hardware problems.But ultimately it was the PCI slot which was faulty.HP person has replaced that module .It started working.

Good luck