Re: 9405-520 DIsk Location Resource Questions and SRC Code

There are only two (maybe 3) drive positions offered as Load Source on a SCSI system. In this order: P3-D2 is preferred and default (Third from top if tower) P3-D1 is second. If there is a third (foggy memory) then P3-D3 would be that. SCSI controllers can only boot from the first port and the other four drives are all on the second port.

This older system still uses what is known as an IOP or I/O Processor. That is what the 2844 card is. The RAID card is mounted in a special slot below (or in your case to the right) of the disk units. Depending on the RAID card and age of your system the 2844 card stands between the RAID Card (5709) and the CPU. It offloads I/O workload from the system processor. The 2844 can control up to 3 total cards such as SCSI Tape, Fiber tape, modem and Ascyn cards and 10/100 Ethernet cards. Rules exist for how many at once.

Once the LIC is reloaded use work with disk units then problem recovery preocedures and then initialize and format. You should see 7 drives, initialize them all.

If that succeeds then perform Start RAID and you should get two RAID sets one of 4x35G and one of 4x70G drives. This will take some time as it has to move some of the data on the load source disk.

If that all works then you have a functioning system. I expect this will be the case.


- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com
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On 2/20/2018 9:28 PM, Shawn Merrick wrote:

Hello DrFranken,


Yes, all I did was swap drives around, and all 8 drives are always found and operate. I just swapped them again per your suggestion, and the lower P2 backplane continues to have the odd looking issues. They strangely keep all of their activity LEDs lit solid and are not offered as a load source destination when installing the LIC. I assume this is not normal so please advise if you know otherwise.


In the very limited DST from IPL to LIC media, I saw an event referring to 2844 (an IOP). Is this considered a RAID card? I do have 2 of these in the system (top slot 1 and bottom slot 6) since it was upgraded to 8 drives years ago. I opened the side hood and could not locate any cables going to the expansion cards on my first attempt. Knowing this, do you think it is likely a cable is present? Could the 2844 cards be swapped to see if the problem moves to the upper drive array? I did not wish to remove a bunch of other parts tonight for concern of making something worse going later into the evening. Maybe try again mid-day this week.


LIC is currently installing (again) so it will be a while before I get back to the more functional DST of Manual "A" IPL.


Thanks for your suggestions and advice.


Shawn

________________________________
From: MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2018 5:27 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: 9405-520 DIsk Location Resource Questions and SRC Code

If all you did was pull and swap drives they would be found happily.
There are no internal cables for the backplanes they sit on the planar
board and connect tot he RAID card through that.

Now depending on the backplane there MIGHT be a cable off the lower
backplane to a second RAID card. If that's the case then you've
potentially got a dead RAID card there but this was very much NOT the
normal configuration for these systems.

If you are able to see the upper four drives and init those then the
upper backplane is good. While rare those backplanes DO fail. Try
swapping all 8 drives from uppper to lower and IPL from the CD again.
See if you then see only the 8 drives in the upper backplane.

Also open the hood and see if there is a cable off the back-side of the
lower backplane going to a RAID card.


- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com<http://www.Frankeni.com>

[http://www.frankeni.com/images/fpower2008.jpg]<http://www.frankeni.com/>

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On 2/20/2018 5:10 PM, Shawn Merrick wrote:

Hi Jim,


I only removed/replaced disk units from the P2 and P3 bays. I did not mess with internal cables, but the system was transported. I will double check them. I do suspect they are intact or the disks oddly reporting to P1 instead of P2 would not be reporting at all. Disks in P3 report correctly.


Thanks,


Shawn

________________________________
From: MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Jim Oberholtzer <midrangel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2018 5:07 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: 9405-520 DIsk Location Resource Questions and SRC Code

Did you mess with the cables? Be sure they are in tight, I've seen CEs not push them in tightly.

Jim Oberholtzer
Agile Technology Architects
Office: 414-433-4363
Cell: 414-915-1445
Sent from iPad

"I've learned that courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear". -- Nelson Mandela

On Feb 20, 2018, at 3:53 PM, Steinmetz, Paul <PSteinmetz@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Shawn,

Possibly the DASD controller retained some info, probably should have "flushed the cache".
You may still want to try this, see if the error disappears.

Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Shawn Merrick
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2018 4:47 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: 9405-520 DIsk Location Resource Questions and SRC Code

Hello,


I'd like to follow up with some additional details to clarify. I think I have caused misconfigured hardware, hopefully not damaged.


Both P2 and P3 Backplanes are type 28D2. Misconfigured Backplane P2 has no associated hardware resources (seemingly causing attached disks to report as if on P1). Working Backplane P3 shows "Device Services" as the hardware resource and then the 4 disks properly located at P3.


Another odd symptom of P2 is the 4 disks have solid green power/activity lights, while the normally configured disks on P3 do not. Even with NO disks inserted into P2, it still kept these planar green indicators lit solid.


I initially thought an IPL of LIC optical media and initialize would auto detect and configure these things, but this is where I ended up so far. I don't know what else to do now. I keep researching and reading.


Thanks,

Shawn
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