Subject: Re: Random SCSI disk detection errors
From: Hollis R Blanchard (hollis+@andrew.cmu.edu)
Date: Mon Jan 29 2001 - 20:04:16 MST
On Mon, 29 Jan 2001, Kelli Hendrickson wrote:
>
> I include his post below as a reference.
> We are having the same problem on a PowerMac7600/120.
> It has 1 SCSI drive with both the MAC OS and a newly
> puchased CS1.2. During install, the install program
> failed to recognize the scsi controller. We returned
> to the BootX App and clicked the option 'Force SCSI on'.
> This seemed to solve our problems until we were ready to
> actually use the system. Booting from BootX App produces
> similar errors that R. Blocker describes. However, ours
> is pretty persistent. The one time we got it to boot,
> sendmail hung and we impatiently rebooted the machine again.
> (ok, so we learned a lesson about patience!)
The most frequent cause of these sorts of errors is bad SCSI termination.
The 2nd most frequent cause (oddly enough) is having a Quantum Fireball at
SCSI id 0. Switch it up to 1 and it works without a problem.
-Hollis
> > I'm having a problem with random scsi disk detection failures. I have CS
> > 1.1 inbstalled on a PowerMac 7600 with two internal 1.2GB SCSI HDs. The
> > first HD (SCSI ID 0) is HFS with MacOS 8.6 installed. The second HD (SCSI
> > ID 1) has Yellowdog CS 1.1.
> >
> > During installation, I noticed that the installer was identifying the only
> > Linux HD listed as sda (not sdb as I expected -- i'd previoulsy had
> > LinuxPPC on this disk, so it was already formated for linux). This caused
> > me some concern about using fdisk to format the disk. I bailed out of the
> > installation, but after I'd finally determined that it actually was the
> > disk I wanted, I went ahead.
> >
> > After installation, the machine booted fine, but the following showed up in
> > the boot diagnostics:
> >
> > scsi0: MESH
> > scsi1: S3C94
> > scsi: 2 hosts
> > mesh: target 0 aborted
> > mesh: target 1 synchronous at 10. MB/s
> > vendor: Quantum Model: FIREBALL_TM1280s Revision:300z
> >
> > As you can see, target 0 (SCSI ID 0) is quietly being aborted, and target 1
> > is detected as the primary (sda) HD. When this happens, everything works
> > fine.
> >
> > When it does not happen, as occurs randomly, the diagnostics show this:
> >
> > scsi0: MESH
> > scsi1: S3C94
> > scsi: 2 hosts
> > mesh: target 0 synchronous at 10.0 MB/s
> > vendor: Quantum Model: FIREBALL1280s Revision: 630g
> > [.....]
> > mesh: target 1 synchronous at 10.0 MB/s
> > vendor: Quantum Model: FIREBALL_TM1280s Revision:300z
> > [.....]
> > Kernel Panic: VFS Unable to mount root fs on 08:05
> >
> > Here, the first disk (SCSI ID 0) is not being aborted. It is being detected
> > as primary (sda), which then causes a kernel panic because there's no linux
> > installed there.
> >
> > I have no idea why target 0 gets aborted most of the time. As I said, I
> > had LinuxPPC installed on this second disk originally (with the same MacOS
> > on the first disk), and there were no problems like this. Can anyone help
> > identify the cause of this problem? Could it be a bug in BootX (v. 1.1.3)
> > is what I'm using)?
> >
> > Thanks for any help.
> >
> > Rick
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Mon Jan 29 2001 - 20:05:34 MST