Veritas-bu

[Veritas-bu] drives going down on media servers

2006-01-24 09:07:18
Subject: [Veritas-bu] drives going down on media servers
From: roger AT dcvast DOT com (Roger Dombrowski)
Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 08:07:18 -0600
Hi Blaine,

I have been looking to try and solve this problem for two sites that I'm 
working with right now
and we're not having much luck either.  In my travels I've talked to a 
few folks that have seen
this "External Event" issue caused by monitoring software. One client in 
particular found that one
of Sun's monitoring tools was sending out scsi inquiries and causing the 
"external event rewinds".

I also ran across a post on this mailing list that documents about 30 
such applications that have
been known to cause this type of behaviour.  Try searching this list for 
"external event". If a get
a chance, I'll try and dig it up and send you the post I'm thinking of.

Through the course of my research I've basically found that two things 
are trying to communicate
with the drive and most folks check out the data path (hba's, switches, 
bridges,...) to look for problems.

Maybe the upgrade stepped on some scsi reservation setting. If I find 
anything else, I'll post to the
list...

Blaine Robison wrote:

>I am having a similar issue. I have a windows 2000 master and a pair of sun
>480's with 8 LTO2 drives shared between them. I get External Event caused
>rewind error and the tapes get frozen or the drives go down. I didn't have the
>problem unti lI upgraded to 5.1 MP4. I have gone over the entire configuration
>and cannot find a problem. 
>
>Has anyone else seen this and found a resolution?   
>
>--- ida3248b AT post.cybercity DOT dk wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Have you tried /var/adm/messages (Solaris) or the equivalent log ?
>>
>>Regards
>>Michael
>>
>>On Wed, 18 Jan 2006 15:00:24 +0000, Dave Markham wrote
>>    
>>
>>>I have 1 master server, and 2 media servers connected over fiber to 
>>>an L700. Im not sure what the switch in the middle is as didnt 
>>>install the system or have any info on it.
>>>
>>>There are 5 drives in the L700 and 3 of them are shared with sso 
>>>option to the master, and both media servers.
>>>
>>>People i have had an issue lately with drives being not visible to 
>>>one of my media servers.
>>>
>>>I have fixed this by unloading the fibre hba using cfgadm and 
>>>loading it again. It then can see the devices under sgscan and has 
>>>seen them under /dev/rmt
>>>
>>>I also noticed the customer had removed a /etc/hosts entry for the 
>>>media servers to talk to each other by the correct name so i put 
>>>that back in and can now talk on port 13701 to each machine in the 
>>>nbu setup.
>>>
>>>Whats happening now though is drives just keep going down on the 
>>>media servers and backups are not working. I have ITC enabled so 
>>>each media server needs to lock 2 drives.
>>>
>>>I have looked the bptm logs and cant see anything jumping out apart 
>>>from many request medias of different tape ids. I have looked in 
>>>/usr/openv/volmgr/debug/ltid/ and the logs in their show 
>>>successfully on communicating shared drive info to the master.
>>>
>>>Therefore i am now stuck and have no idea whats going wrong :(
>>>
>>>Anyone any advice/pointers? Is ether anything specific i should be 
>>>looking for in the logs or are there other important logs im not checking.
>>>
>>>Thanks
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>Veritas-bu maillist  -  Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
>>>http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu
>>>      
>>>
>>--
>>Cybercity Webhosting (http://www.cybercity.dk)
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Veritas-bu maillist  -  Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
>>http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu
>>
>>    
>>
>
>
>Blaine Robison
>Solaris Ceritfied System Administrator 
>Solaris Certified Network Administrator
>Veritas Certified Professional
>972-853-2459
>214-578-5391
>
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>  
>


-- 
Roger Dombrowski                                dcVAST, Inc.
roger AT dcvast DOT com                         1327 Butterfield Rd.
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