Problem adding 5402A raid controller on an ES45

[Danz R]

Hi Guys,

I have an Alpha ES45 with existing 5402A controller connected to the drive cage with the boot disk. When I add a new 5402A controller to a vacant slot 8, the system cannot detect the old controller anymore thus the system doesn't boot. It however show 2 new devices on the SRM pya and pya representing the new controller. Has anyone have any idea why is this happening?

Thanks,
DDR

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi,

The new controller you've just installed is probably being picked up as pya0, and the existing controller changed to pyb0.

If you do a "show dev" from the P00>> prompt, you'll probably see that your boot disks have changed from dyaX to dybX - compare the output with the boot devices - "show boot*"

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rob

[Danz R]

The old device is indeed pya0 with boot device dya0 and dyb0 as the second lun. When I connected the additional controller (with dual-scsi ports) the new devices are:

P000>> show dev
are
pya0
pyb0
NOTE: there are no more dya0 and dyb0

the new boot device from dya0 becomes dyb0.
when typing P00>> boot
the message is:
failed to boot from dyb0 etc.

I suspect that the additional controller has been detected but the old controller was disabled. Is this correct? and what could possibly be the reason? Please note that i have not upgraded the firmware of the old controller when I installed the new controller. And that these two controllers are the same (5402A raid controllers).

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi,

I'm not entirely sure what's going on...

What were the disk devices before you added the second controller...? If there were two logical drives, then I'd expect dya0 and dya1, not dya0 and dyb0 as you suggest.

Try looking at the output of "show config" with and without the second card installed. That should hopefully enable you to work out what's changing - as you should see the disk devices underneath the controller devices.

Cheers,

Rob

[Danz R]

I'm sorry for that, yes its dya0 and dya1 - dyb0 was the new boot device when the second controller was added.

Do alpah system show ONE pyX device per controller even if the controller has dual scsi ports in it?

What about the possibility of the two cards not having the same level of firmware?

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi,

Yes. I've just looked at an ES45 that has a four port card (5304A) and that shows just the one pyaX device (pya0).

I'd expect the two port card (5302A) to be the same.

Cheers,

Rob

[Danz R]

Thanks Rob.

So the two cards therefore are being detected! Here's exactly what's happening:

Before installing the second card...

P00>> show dev
pya0
dya0 <--- original boot device
dya1
etc.....

After installing the new card....

P00>> show dev
pya0 <---New controller
pyb0 <---Old controller

dya0 and dya1 are missing and the boot dev becomes dyb0 - but there's no dyb0 nor dyb1 from "show dev". I still don't have access to the servers as of yet, but would you know what could possibly wrong? I haven't performed any firmware update nor have I ran NHD7. Could these be the missing peices of this puzzle?

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hmmm.... Looking at the release notes here:

ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/alphaserver/storage/controllers/sa5300a/av-rt17d-te.pdf

There needs to be at least one logical volume on the boot controller...

You could just try moving the drive cage to the new controller and see if that finds the drives - the RAID configuration is stored on the disks rather than the controller, so you shouldn't lose anything.

Cheers,

Rob

[Danz R]

Aparently, I have already did that as well.

Upon installation of the new controller on PCI slot no 8 of the ES45 and moved the connection of the drive cage to the new controller...i got a scrolling error (but i can't recall the continuously displayed message!).

What I haven't tried yet (and is worth trying once I gain access again) is to remove the old controller and install the new controller to the slot where the old controller was installed and put the old card to PCI slot number 8. And check if I will get the same error.

Rob, are you ruling out the possibility of the 2 cards not on the same firmware level?

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi,

No idea on firmware really, as I've never used more than one card in the same box.

It probably won't harm to boot the latest firmware CD and make sure everything is up to date...

Cheers,

Rob

[Khairy]

hi guys,

just to recap...

Prev bootable scsi adapter - pya0 (attach to disk backplane)

When installed new raid adapter,this what happen :
pya0 - new raid adapter
pyb0 - old raid adapter (bootable-attach to disk backplane)

you intend to use the new raid adapter by connect it to the existing disk backplane.

Solution:
in this case, pya0 doesn't know any config since all the config are in disks.

To correct this, perform run bios on pya0.
P00>>> run bios pya0

And choose option to view logical drives.
This will allow the adapter to load config from the disk.

By right, you should see all the logical drives config previously from old controller. Exit from the menu and you will prompt to save the config. Do this by pressing F8 and this will load the disk config to raid adapter.

It should bring u back to SRM. From SRM, make sure the following var are set correctly.

P00>>> show heap_expand
P00>>> show bootbios <- it should show pya0

If the var are not set, set it and initialize SRM
P00>>> init

When you get back the SRM prompt, perform show config or show dev d to check if the logical drives are detected.

Let us know the outcome and good luck!

Rgds