Patrik, I think I owe you a thank you!
Very Respectfully,
Michael Mayer
IBM i on Power System Admin.
IT Operations.
The Florida Bar
651 E. Jefferson St
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3. Re: Power 6 8203-E4A (Patrik Schindler)
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message: 3
date: Wed, 1 Sep 2021 20:04:18 +0200
from: Patrik Schindler <poc@xxxxxxxxxx>
subject: Re: Power 6 8203-E4A
Hello Michael,
Am 01.09.2021 um 15:36 schrieb Mayer, Michael via MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
Morning all. There is a happy ending to this thread.
This is a masterful exemplary how to write a post mortem documentation for others to learn from!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmortem_documentation
Well done!
:wq! PoC
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-----Original Message-----
date: Wed, 1 Sep 2021 13:36:00 +0000
from: "Mayer, Michael via MIDRANGE-L" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: Power 6 8203-E4A
Morning all. There is a happy ending to this thread.
As you all know, an SRC of B2004158 = system cannot locate it's load source drive. Many of you said the load source drive was MIA which was true. The question was "is it dead?"
The box doesn't have a maint contract on it so it is "an accepted risk" (mgmt. decision). If something goes wrong, it's on me to get it running, if possible.
We were moving from 1 UPS to another. I wouldn't do it without a full system save. That was completed Monday, mid-day.
We then powered off the partition and then the managed system. We then simply moved the power from 1 UPS to the other.
The managed system powered up normally, the partition died with the dreaded B200-4158 error. The classic "load source cannot be located".
Did the load source drive die? Did the chassis the drives are in die? Did a controller card die or a cable go bad?
The only way to bring it up was to run a D manual IPL with an IBASE01 LIC DVD. I inherited this system and was left with little to almost no resources for it.
Fortunately, IBM still has V7R1 IBASE material and all of the BGROUPxx LIC / OS available for download.
I was able to pull the IBASE01 LIC down and burn a DVD. The DVD goes into the box, we IPL as D manual and we get into DST to see what is going on.
In conjunction with that as a side note, I keep EVERY BIT of system info for all partitions online for reference.
PRTSYSINF plus SYSSNAP from MGTOOLS plus my own homegrown CLLE to get JOBDS to print.
I pull the system config which shows the drives.
There are 9 drives in the back of the physical box and 7 upfront including the load source drive.
In DST, a look at the disk config only showed the back 9 drives.
The entire front chassis was not reporting in. And now it's WTF?
I put out a blog message on midrange.com. Many thought the load source drive died. Many of you were kind enough to weigh in.
As it turns out, a virtual IOP failed looking at the hardware resources in DST. This was a chassis controller card to the drives in front which included the load source drive.
Josh Osborne of Abacus Solutions was kind enough to call me out of the blue to work with me. Unbelievable. And I'm Incredibly grateful for his support.
Our IBM i community is THE BEST!
Ends up he has a replica of our box in his shop. He said that the back controller card which controls the back 9 drives had 2 slots in it and 1 of them was open.
I moved the back 9 controller card cable from the bottom slot to the top of that card. We then moved the front controller card cable from it's location in the 5790 expansion unit to the bottom of the back controller card.
Effectively, we ran all of the drives off of 1 controller card using both slots.
Next was to update the load source location on the partition.
The partition IPL'd and is running. It now has a failed drive which we're in the process of resolving.
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