[SunRescue] Quantum VK4550 on Ultra30 won't format

[Wazir, Deborah]

I hope someone can shed some light on this.  I recently got a bunch of
Ultra-30s and was asked to install Solaris 7 on them.  So far I've tried on
two of them, and got the same errors.  I am using jumpstart to boot across
the network, and right after the begin script Install_begin completes, I get
this error:

WARNING:/pci at 1f,4000/scsi at 3 (glm0):
	Unexpected DMA state: ACTIVE.
dstat=81<DMA-FIFO-empty,illegal-instruction>
offline

This is not the showstopper though, since it's just a warning.  A couple of
seconds later, a dialog box opens that says:

Error
One or more disks are found, but one of the following problems exists:
> Hardware failure
> Unformatted disk

So then I open a new console window, and run format.  It finds the disk:

0: c0t0d0 <drive type unknown>
	/pci at 1f,4000/scsi at 3/sd at 0,0

then it presents a menu of disk types - one of the options is
"autoconfigure", but when I choose that it fails "autoconfigure failed".  I
have tried choosing other entries (there were 2 for Quantum) and also
choosing "other" and entering bogus parameters.  Even though format accepts
the disk type choices I make, here is the problem:

When I choose "format" it tries to start formatting the disk, but
immediately fails - "Reserve failed" "failed".  I have searched all over the
place for this error message and in the manuals to find out what format is
trying to do and I can't find anything.  I used "truss" on format, and only
found that the error was Err#5 EIO, which is a physical I/O error.

At the OK prompt, probe-scsi finds the drive just fine.  I would think it
was just a bad disk except that two machines in a row had the exact same
problem.

Hope somebody can tell me something!

Deborah Wazir
Electronic Data Systems