OS 4.0 and xylogics 450 controllers

[Lewis Levine]

This is a response to my own posting to sun-spots a few weeks ago
concerning disk controller problems. Luckily, the problem looks like a
local one only and that other sites with 450 controllers running 4.0
should not have a problem. I guess I shouldn't have jumped the gun and
cried wolf so quickly, but all things seemed to point to the 450/OS4.0
combination (our two other servers running with 451 controllers all
came up fine) and an appeal to sun- spots, I hoped, would reveal others
having similar troubles. Thanx for all of the responses I received over
e-mail, though. It's nice to know there is a responsive community of users
out there!


Most users will probably not have a problem with their 450 controllers with
OS4.0. What happened here (we just got it resolved after 2 1/2 weeks and 4
controllers and 1 disk!) was that the disk that messed up turned out not to
be set for slip sectoring. It seems that whoever installed it failed to run
format on it! When 4.0 was brought up and the disk format run, no defects list
was found and a message about not being configured for slip sectoring also
came up. After a fighting with format and a few controllers, sun finally
brought in a new disk. Since the new disk was formatted properly, it worked
fine. We then went back and figured out what had happened.

Once we figured out what had happened, we weren't surprised about the problems
we had. Unfortunately it took 2 1/2 weeks to get this particular system back
up. Mixed into that time was also the discovery that certain backup tapes
had been accidently written over, etc. All in all, I'd say no one else should
have the same problem with going to 4.0, we were just a victim of some strange
circumstances. (who would think a disk running for over 2 years had never
been properly formatted?!?!).