[geeks] Sun SSP monkeying - any SSP 'experts' about?

[JP Hindin]

I have ended up with a pair of E10ks (one since dismantled for spares),
and a triplet of SSPs. Entertainingly, through surprise and misadventure
(and quite possibly related to the eventual decommissioning of both the
E10ks), all three of the SSPs are the "Spare" SSPs - not the MAINs.

The one that already has the EEPROMs for the unit I'm trying to bring up
appears to not be fully installed right - it gives me the following each
time I try and run something useful:
fo_clt_get_host_role: door_call() failed, errno: 9
Unable to determine role of SSP
Is SSP initialization complete?

The other two (one is a mirror of the other, I suspect one _was_ the MAIN
for that E10k, but it's internal disk died and it was simply cloned from
the corresponding Spare) do not give me such errors - but won't execute
any commands (ignoring the key differences to the E10k) because it's the
Spare SSP.

All three machines are running SSP v3.5.0. The documentation suggests that
the appropriate way to force a fail-over is to run:
$ setfailover force
However I'm told (by setfailover) that the command can only be run _on_
the MAIN... which appears to badly defeat the purpose of having a failover
setup, unless it failed in such a graceful way as to allow the Spare to
be told to take-over.

I've tried doing an ssp-unconfig/ssp-config to rebuild the setup on the
first SSP (with the init complaints), but it never actually asks the
question "Am I the MAIN SSP?" at the end like the documentation says it
should.

Frankly, I'm running out of braincells here to come up with something else
to try.

I'd sure love some suggestions.

 - JP