SUMMARY 4.2Gb Multipack and 4.1.1

From: Richard Butler (richard@biocell.irmkant.rm.cnr.it)
Date: Fri Apr 15 1994 - 18:36:06 CDT


 The original question was basically "Can I reconfigure the kernel so that I
can use all four disks in the Multipack plus two internal disks and a tape
drive all off one SCSI". (Complete question below).

 Six people sent replies very quickly. Even better they were unanimous: Yes.

alter the lines for sd1 and sd3 in the kernel configuration file to:
 disk sd1 at sm0 drive 050 flags 0
 disk sd3 at sm0 drive 060 flags 0

where the 050 and 060 correspond to the SCSI addresses I wanted to use.
Reconfigure the kernel, reboot, partition the new disks and mount them.

I did exactly this and it works fine.

They also pointed out that I don't need to use sd1 and sd3 which have
configuration data for the old Sun shoeboxes, and that it might be better to
remove the disk sr0 line which might conflict (I did remove it).

Thanks to:
    Rich Schultz rich@ccrwest.org
    Daniel Strick dan@bellcore.com
    Eckhard.Rueggeberg@ts.go.dlr.de
    Don Lewis gdonl@gv.ssi1.com
    Mike mikem@centerline.com
    Sean Dillman sdillman@tech.concorde.com

and to any others whose messages haven't yet arrived.

Original Question:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi all,
    
    Last year we bought a Sun 4.2Gb disk pack to connect to a Sun 4/330
running SunOS 4.1.1. When we did this we knew that we would only be able to
use the new disks at half speed, but what we didn't realize was that we could
only use half the disks! This is because the disk pack contains four 1.05Gb
disks each of which needs its own SCSI address - the 330 already has two
internal SCSI disks and, according to the manual, only four disks can be put
onto one SCSI unless we upgrade to Solaris 2.
    Our long term solution is to buy another Sun and hook the pack to the new
machine, which will let us use them at Fast SCSI-2 speeds. In the meantime we
have disconnected two of the disks in the pack from the SCSI and mains power
and the other two have been working happily for several months.

    BUT we want the disk space NOW! A new look at the manual shows that it
actually says:

     "If you are using the generic operating system kernel of the Solaris 1.1
operating system, the Multi-Disk Pack must be on a SCSI bus which does not
contain other SCSI disks."

It says "generic". Does that mean we can configure a new kernel to use six
disks + one tape drive which is what we have? We know its not ideal to load
all this onto one SCSI, but it would resolve our problem for now.

The relevant bit in our (already reconfigured) kernel is:

tape st0 at sm0 drive 040 flags 1
tape st1 at sm0 drive 050 flags 1
tape st2 at sm0 drive 030 flags 1
tape st3 at sm0 drive 020 flags 1
disk sr0 at sm0 drive 060 flags 2
disk sd0 at sm0 drive 000 flags 0
disk sd1 at sm0 drive 001 flags 0
disk sd2 at sm0 drive 010 flags 0
disk sd3 at sm0 drive 011 flags 0
disk sd4 at sm0 drive 020 flags 0
disk sd6 at sm0 drive 030 flags 0

sd2 and sd6 correspond to the internal 669 drives, while sd0 and sd4 are the
two working 1.05 drives. SCSI addresses 1 and 3 are used by the internal
drives, 0 and 2 by the new drives, 4 by the tape drive leaving 5 and 6 free.
Can we use them?
What numbers do we use in the kernel config file(especially the column 040 etc)?
What are sd1 and sd3 there for?

All help appreciated

=========================================================================
Richard Butler Cell Biology Institute, C.N.R.
tel +39-6-86090360 viale C.Marx 43
fax +39-6-8273287 I-00137 ROME, Italy
richard@biocell.irmkant.rm.cnr.it
=========================================================================



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