[SunRescue] SPARCserver+SSA Questions (lots :)

[Bjrn Ramqvist]

> > And sorry for the huge filesizes. These are just raw (unedited) scans
> > which eventually will show up at www.sunhelp.org hopefully someday.
> 
> Excellent pictures, I love 'm ! I'm gonna print these out and hang 'm above
> my bed :)

Hehe. I have some pictures of the SC2000(E) too, which are even better
looking. :-)
('Data Center' cabinet, like the 4/x90 series)

> This might indeed be 100Mbit, I don't have the hardware here to check
> it (only have a simple 10Mbit subnet) but I'll try to take fluke lanmeter
> from work and see if it can tell me anything. I could't find a digit
> in the xxx-xxxx form (is there a specific place where I should look ?)
> I looked at the chipset and this seems te be a "Player DP83257VF", an
> additional sticker says 650-0310-01 rev 1.0u1. A search on that sticker number
> didn't bring anything but a search on the DP83257VF got me to the
> National Semiconductor site which had a datasheet on this chip, saying
> it's a "Player & Device Enhanced FDDI Physical Layer Controller"
> right ..... err .... so what the heck is that then ?
> (http://207.82.57.10/pf/DP/DP83257.html#General Description)
> It doesn't tell me much in first instance so I'm gonna read up on
> this chip and try to figure out what it does.

Sounds to me like this is actually a CDDI-card. Copper Distributed Data
Interface, as opposed to FDDI (Fibre Data...). It's just a cheaper type
of FDDI communication, running over Cat-5 STP cable. Since this is
'Token Ring' style interface, effeciency is much higher, maxes out at
about 90% workload (where Ethernet become crowded at only 50%).
We use CDDI among several servers in our computer room at work, and use
the FDDI (fiber) to other floors in the building and to other buildings.
So, chances are that this might be a CDDI-board. You don't have any
value of this unless you have some FDDI/CDDI gear to hook this up to.
You could probably sell this baby for quite some $$$, or atleast trade
it for something good.

And no, you can't run Ethernet over it. It's even switched backwards
(require a cross-over cable) to function properly, just to ensure this
is CDDI, and not Ethernet. I know, I spent over 1.5 hours one night
trying to figure out why our Alpha 4100 didn't come online to the net!
:-)

> Another thing that struck me was that both system board 1 and 2 have both
> 4 cpu's on it, so there should be 8 cpu's in total! (I know this arch
> can support 8, but when linux boots it only tells me it has 4), I know
> that if I boot my SparcStation20 with "boot -v" it tells me which
> cpu it sees (e.g. counting them) - but booting this baby with the -v
> switch tells me a lot - just not much about the cpu's. Is there another
> way to get this info from the prom ? (I guess I need to look at the
> raw device node's ... right ?)

Well, no. If you look carefully, you see that the modules only hold one
CPU and one 'Cache Controller' each. It's not possible,
architecture-wise with the XDBus, to run any modules without cache
onboard.

SPARCserver 1000:	(40MHz backplane)
runs SM41 and SM51

SPARCserver 1000E:	(50MHz backplane)
runs SM61 and SM81

Another thing which might confuse you is that the SM61 and SM81 have a
huge heatsink which covers both the CPU and the cache controller,
assuming (visually) 'just one CPU'. Atleast some (or almost all) of the
SM41 and SM51 have two seperate heatsinks, one on each chip, which could
confuse things. (visually looking as 'two CPUs')
Sounds like you have the 1000-model, without the 'E'.

> > That's the 'disc expansion board'. The 'IN'-port sure is SCSI-IN, where you route a cable
> > from the 1st (or 2nd) systemboards SCSI-connector. Put a SCSI-terminator
> > at the SCSI-OUT port.
> 
> Okay, that was what I thought, so I just need to buy a external scsi cable
> and plug it between board 1/2 and 3 right ?

Exactly. 

> Well, the online manual says (great - and this is just *not* the info I was looking
> for :) that it's important to put this in to keep a good airflow inside ...
> (but I guess it's more there just that you don't have a gaping hole in the
> back of your server :_)

Ofcourse a computer needs to be cosmeticly correct, at all times! :-)
Yes, airflow should be contained good in that kind of machine, since the
CPUs can create some amount of heat.

> > The first 2 green lights is sitting there just telling you if either CPU
> > is working or not. (Green LED off = nonfunctional or non-excistent CPU)
> > The other ones just have the same function as on the 4/300, 4/400 and
> > 4/600 CPU's (and probably some Sun3s); activity-LEDS - in a very cool
> > way. :-)
> 
> Cool! So they actually *do* have a meaning ! It's shame they are at the back
> tho, I've caught myself many times this week hanging my head over the server
> and looking at those neat lights :-)
> Excellent tho, I'm gonna have a whack at running 12 compilers and cranking
> up the load av. just to see how they react.

Just run a SETI at Home client task (which are single threaded), and you
should definitly see one of those runner-lights starting to slow down,
almost to a stop. Could be useful to see if there's any activity on
either CPU. :-)

> > Pull the handle out and slide the tray out fully. Carefully push it back
> > just a liiiittle bit, and lift it straight up. (not OUT) Check under the
> > tray. There should be a some sort of "clamp" there, which you can push.
> > Push that little metallic clamp, and meanwhile slide the tray out
> > completely. Viola.
> 
> Thanx for this tip! I would never have figured this out.

Actually, it was a Sun engineer that showed this to me when we picked up
the equipment. :-)

> This is kind of wierd ; indeed they all blink when you power-on, then
> each drive spins up (you can actually hear this, just like a tiny
> jet engine powering up) and after a couple of minutes all lines are
> solid except those 3 ones (they keep blinking). At least that was
> until yesterday, now only 2 lines keep blinking (the most left and
> right) ... maybe there's just something wrong with these drives
> although it's strange that they are all in one line ...

Try refitting all three trays, as there could be some glitch in the
connectors. Also check all drives and reseat them properly in their
positions. After all, you don't know what this machine could have gone
through. Also look after the software, which should been installed on
the machine, to try to check things up with the array.
If all things fail, it could be the interface board on the array.

Have you seen the drives in the front, behind the plastic cover and that
metal plate?
There you have a SCSI-controller which hangs directly on the XDBus, thus
providing a "systemwide" controller without depending on either
systemboard. Looks like it has a serial-port too. Neat stuff.

> That number, 6229, means (at least that's what I gathered) from the
> online docs just the array ID, so nothing scary about that number,
> as far as finding out what the blinking lines and the blinking
> led at the back of the array mean, still no luck, I looked at
> the document you pointed out but there's nothing about either
> the LCD (well some info but not much) or about the LED at the
> back ... I'm gonna keep looking for this info.

Please report back to our S.H.R (Sun Hardware Reference) maintainer.
This is useful info.


> > To keep things short; this is no hardware-RAID box.
> >
> > Some facts:
> > The array consists of either a 40MHz MicroSPARC (the 100/102 model), or

<snip>

> > boards, but for smaller configurated servers like SS 5/10/20, or Ultra
> > 1.
> 
> Wow. Thanks for the explanation, great to get some insight on the technical
> details. I looked at the processor in the array and it's a MicroSPARC-II
> (STP 1012PGA, MB 86904 to be precise) - so this must be a 110/112/114 model
> then right ? (btw is there a mark/sticker somewhere which tells me what this
> is exactly (e.g. 110, 112 or 114) - I've looked in various places but
> still haven't been able to find it.

I haven't found any sticker either, just looked at the FEH, telling me
that there were two models with either MicroSPARC or MicroSPARC-II. I
think I even have the "-110" mark on my arrays, which further proved the
fact.

> I've never played around with FC, but
> it certainly looks good, I gathered there's even an ANSI standard for
> it (and there aren't that many ANSI compliant standards for hardware
> communication protocols) so I'm gonna look a little closer at this,
> I find it quite remarkable that Sun already had this kind of technolage
> in the early nineties actually.

Sun has been running this for quite some years now, but I think there
was a marketing step to further improve the interface and possibly make
it more "open" to other vendors. Earlier everyone relied on SCSI, which
was limited in certain cases.
There are many forums, resellers and products today, but everyone seems
to have forgotten that Sun was one of the pioneers of FC earlier.

As for now, we've invested in a Compaq (Digital) RAIDarray 8000 with
FC-AL interface, hubs and some servers. Cool to the the massive
throughput of this baby. Just formatting a RAID-set keeps the controller
busy with 45MB/s throughput. :-)

> I'm certainly gonna play a little more with Solaris (it's still on one
> of the disks in the server) - it seems though that there's actually
> array support in the linux kernel though! It's called pluto
> (for the kernel hackers among us :
> /usr/src/linux-2.2.*/drivers/scsi/pluto.c, and /usr/src/drivers/fc4/*.c)
> which calls a soc module to set up initial communication with the array
> (sending&recieving packets over the FC) and then tries to communicate
> with the array itself.

Cool. Things are going forward for the S/Linux project as it seems.
Too bad we don't have any 4/400 support yet. :-(
I'll take a closer look at this. Looks interesting.
 
> Anyway, please forgive me if some of these question are quite stupid,
> I've only been playing with Sun hardware for 2 weeks now so I'm still
> a bit of a newbie as far as Sun Hardware.

We've all been newbies at one time. Heck, I was as much newbie as you
were when we recieved this baby. :-)
(Although, I've been dealing with Sun equipment much earlier)


	/Regards, Bjorn