[rescue] Re: Ultra 10, again (won't this guy ever shut up?)

[Robert Novak]

On Wed, 5 Sep 2001 s at avoidant.org wrote:

> Mike Nicewonger wrote:
> 
> > That is odd, I have sold at least 6 of the Symbios boards for 
> > U10's with not a single complaint.
> 
> Very odd. It worked perfectly for a day. Just long enough to install the
> OS and get happy. 

I will apologize if this was suggested weeks ago, but you might try
checking the OBP versions now that the system is booting in IDE-land.
Maybe you got lucky the first time, rather than unlucky the later times?

> Also, assuming this box stays up and is actually usefull, can I mount
> the drives with "logging" on IDE? I assume it's based on the
> filesystem, yes? So media doesn't matter.

I think you can. I might have done it on a U5 once, but not that I can
certify from memory.

> Can I swap these drives for faster ones? They're Ultra ATA33, and now
> there's Ultra ATA<something faster>. Anyone know? Or is the bus speed
> the limit? I don't know these things, the only IDE I have is in my
> laptop and a Javelin Wedge.

I don't know that it will make a big difference. To optimize your
performance, you might consider putting two suitably sized whatever disks
(ATA33/66/100) in the system, manually mirror your little root partition
(nightly mount/ufsdump|ufsrestore/umount) and use disksuite to mirror your
other partitions across the disks. Maybe even hang one of the disks on the
secondary controller (along with the CDROM) to spread out the buses.

I've heard bad stories of ufs logging of root partitions, but I can't
expound because I don't have any useful level of detail. The manual
mirroring will let you do a "boot disk1:a" if disk0 is bwoke. MIght have
to tweak your vfstab in the script, but it's worth a try.

Ya know, I suddenly realize this stuff might be better suited for sunhelp,
rather than rescue. Maybe I should wander over there and lurk a bit :)

--Rob


Robert Novak, Indyramp Consulting * rnovak at indyramp.com * indyramp.com/~rnovak
        "And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
           Maybe this year will be better than the last...." -- counting crows