[lug] My last hope....and nerve

[Nate Duehr]

On Oct 29, 2007, at 6:28 PM, D. Stimits wrote:

> Steve A Hart wrote:
>> I'm still dealing with two Promise UltraTrak RM8000 raid arrays and  
>> I'm getting desperate to find an answer to my problem.  Here's the  
>> rundown and hopefully someone out there can help.
>>
>> Let's keep this simple.   I have a single Promise UltraTrak RM8000  
>> connected to an LSI logic SCSI card.  The OS is Fedora Core 6 and  
>> when the OS starts up, all I see is a repeating SCSI bus reset over  
>> and over.
>>
>> I can say with 100% certainty that the problem is NOT the following:
>> SCSI host ID
>> The SCSI cable
>> the terminator (terminated correctly)
>> LSI card
>> motherboard of the host system
>>
>> That only leaves the OS and the promise raid itself.  I know the  
>> RM8000 did run on FC4 running the 2.6.16 kernel but ever since the  
>> 2.6.18 kernels came out it's has not worked.  Now I have it  
>> connected to a FC6 system and still no luck.



You mentioned you're dealing with two having the same problem, and  
they're both plugged into the same type of LSI controller, right?   
That's interesting from a raw "logical troubleshooting" standpoint --  
did they both fail at the same time?  Was it during the OS upgrade?   
Have they ever worked since you've been involved where you saw them  
both up and running?

If it was the hardware, I wouldn't think that they'd both be down...  
separate controllers, separate cables, separate arrays, if I'm reading  
your description correctly.  That doesn't make much logical sense, so  
the likelihood that it's the OS just shot sky high... in my mind  
anyway, unless I missed something.

------

Other comments:

A "crazy" question, perhaps -- are you in touch with Promise regarding  
the problem?  Are they responding?  Feel free to make their response  
or lack thereof public, it may help you with leverage to get an  
Appeasement Engineer on-site.  :-)

Further future-looking questions:  Is this a critical business  
system?  Is it on a service contract?  Should it be?

:-) ;-)

I've got a few Sun A1000 arrays at work that could use a long drop off  
a tall building too... they're in a lab so they can't cause anyone any  
further headaches/harm.

And our customers that use them still, are all highly recommended to  
carry Sun service contracts on theirs.  Most have Sun's "Platinum"  
support level anyway -- so it doesn't take much effort to get an  
Appeasement Engineer (heh heh... I love that term from BOFH) on-site  
with drives in hand.

The hard part is keeping the Sun RMA folks from ordering the wrong  
sized drives, since most of those came with 9GB or 18GB drives, and  
the techs regularly show up with 36's -- thinking that's the  
"smallest" they have available to them.  (GRIN)

I know for a fact that a friend in Sun's storage group (formerly  
StorageTek) has mentioned that he's sent folks on-site with SCSI  
"sniffers" (not a cheap tool by any means!) when customers on service  
contracts call looking for help with serious storage problems...

If Promise can't bring that kind of support to bear, perhaps they're  
not the correct solution for a business platform.  (And if it's not a  
business platform, disregard those comments, of course...)

Someone, somewhere knows how to troubleshoot that thing down to wire- 
level.  I would sincerely hope that the Promise folks have that person  
or persons on-staff... ready to assist... for the "right" price.


--
Nate Duehr
nate at natetech.com