[SunRescue] SPARCserver+SSA Questions (lots :)

[Gregory Leblanc]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sparcy at proxy.goblin.cx [mailto:sparcy at proxy.goblin.cx]
> Sent: Monday, March 20, 2000 4:11 PM
> To: rescue at sunhelp.org
> Subject: Re: [SunRescue] SPARCserver+SSA Questions (lots :)
> 
[snip]
> > 
> > This is the 2nd system board, which probably makes this a 
> 4-way system.
> > Sounds like a fine machine.
> > What I don't know, is that second UTP port. Could be 
> 100Mbit interface,
> > I don't know.
> > Carefully slide the board out and check for and part-number on that
> > Sbus-board.
> > (xxx-xxxx digits)
> 
> 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 

I think this is the part number, but I've never seen one that starts with
650...  

> 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 like a(n?) FDDI controller chip.  FDDI is a fiber based LAN, of some
sort.  I don't know much about it.

> 
> 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 ?)

Try module-info at the ok prompt.  I think that's the command, but I can't
remember for sure.  I think this machine is of the right age for that to
work.  

[snip]
>  
> > > - The 4th drawer is just a platic front.
> > 
> > And therefore; nothing. :-)
> 
> 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 :_)

Or to put something else in, like more disks, or whatever.

[snip]
> 
> 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. I haven't had luck with actually using it, 
> it keeps complaining about "too many continuations for port A", I'm
> compiling it in debug mode as we speak to see what's going on.

I don't recall looking at those drivers (not that they'd mean anything to me
if I had...), but they look to be drivers for the FC interconnect.  If you
want to make RAID devices, be sure to patch your kernel yourself, don't run
off of the originals.  There is a patch that deals with some endian issues
on the SPARC, but I can't recall where the patch is, and I don't think it's
integrated into any of the "current" patches.  It will probably be going
into the 2.3.x kernels, but RAID support there is currently a little
sketchy.  Things should solidify pretty soon here, but walk with caution on
2.3.x kernels.
	Greg