Christmas Shopping...

[Paddy]

Cheers agallag.

I have to hit F2 to ok the data loss, or the adaptor wont mount any logical drives.

Smart Start is running a quick one pass diagnostic to see if there are any problems.

Having consulted the destructions, the card was in a hot plug expansion board - so i'll change that at next boot. Interstingly i have two SCSI RAID controllers. A 4200 and 410.

The 4200 looks like a much better card, so i've pulled the other one out - there was nothing connected to it anyway.

looking at the disks, I have:
Two IBM 9.1GB Ultra3 10K RPM SCSI Drives - set to RAID 1 for the OS
One 'Compaq' branded Wide Ultra SCSI 7200RPM 9.1GB drive
One 'Compaq' branded Wide Ultra SCSI 18.2GB drive (no RPM on label)
Two chunky 1.6inch Seagate 18.2GB drives - I just have the partnumber (9J5007-030)

The three 18.2GB drives were in a RAID 5 array, and the remaining 9.1GB drive is sat there all lonely

The error that you've posted seems to occur when the PCI slot looses power - at the time, the computer was copying data over the network... although maybe the server 'powers down' when it is idle / under low load???

[agallag]

I dont think the server powers down on it's own at any time. The hot swap PCI slots have a switch to shut down the slot before you add or remove a card. If that switch is faulty, it could have caused the power problem.

It's definitely better to keep your array controller out of those slots, since there's no time when you'd want to hot-swap it.

[Paddy]

I dont understand why there are three SCSI controllers in here at all! It looks like the previous owners have kept adding kit as their needs changed, but without removing the old crap.

It looks like i am going to have to rebuild the RAID arrays - which i dont mind doing (this time), but if i cant get the array to stay up, then the server is useless....

[agallag]

If the array doesn't stay up now, then that means the controller is probably bad. Luckily, you have another controller to use if that's the case. As a last resort, you can go back to the non-raid controller, and just use software raid.

[Paddy]

sorry for the delay in replying!

I had to delete the system partition (bios) and remove all references to the raid array.

I recreated the array as it was, after moving it to the non-hot slot.

I was (fortunately) able to do a 'repair' installation so it seems that all i have lost is ~5GB of downloads - and i'm gonna work on that next

I'll set it transferring a large file and then i'm off to the pub.

Cheers for your help lads!

[Paddy]

I'm getting good at this I have managed to salvage everything, man i love these ProLiants

Right.. I came back from the pub (around 3hours later) and everything was ok. The file was still being transfered at a rate of 3Mbps, but everything was fine. I checked the server with VNC.

When I got up this morning the RAID array had died again.

I wonder if this is related to VNC?
It is set to log off user when i disconnect.... now i know that VNC was open when i was at the pub, but i am not sure what i did with it when i went to bed.... I wonder...

I first noticed this error when I had VNC installed... although that was the same time i installed apache, mysql, php and started using the network...

Any thoughts as i am having to rebuild the array again?

[James_D]

Hi paddy, Just wondered if you could overclock those XP-Ms on that board of yours.

Did the bios support them natively?

Just got my hands on a similar board, MSI k7 master dual. And was a bit inspirered by you endavour..

JD

[Paddy]

Sorry James, I gave up on the whole Dual MP and bought myself a cheap Compaq ProLiant 6500 from ebay. It has dual PII Xeon 400mhz and is upgradable to quad PIII Xeon 500

[James_D]

hehe ... damn..
should have read the whole thread..



Thanks anyway..
JD

[Paddy]

no problems matey.

Any thoughts on my VNC / RAID issue?

[Fat Tone]

Difficult to see how that could be the problem - have you tried the Tight-VNC forums?

[Paddy]

There is nothing to confirm on their websites.... but it cant be a coincidence... When VNC quits it causes the user to log off the server and will abort any file transfer... perhaps.. .oh i don't know...

I'm getting quite good at repairing the array - it's back up now with no data loss.

I am going to try and reproduce the error without VNC - I've initiated the file transfer so we'll just have to wait

[Fat Tone]

fingers crossed

[cjolley]

Try remote desktop.
It's already installed and is a snap to set up.
You could try it as an experiment.
Chuck

[agallag]

I agree with chuck. Get rid of VNC and use remote desktop. You can set it to map drives automatically for you, and then you can copy files using explorer.