[SunHELP] CD v NVRAM - what is happening?

[steve price]

check/replace external cables and termination.

--- NikHenville at cs.com wrote:
> I have developed a problem with external SCSI
> devices which is causing me 
> much gnashing of teeth and wailing - especially
> since I need the external CD 
> to load the OS onto a larger hard-disk.
> 
> System
> ------
> SPARCStation IPX with external SCSI tape and
> external SCSI CD-ROM. Both have 
> been running 100% correctly, first under Sun.OS.4
> and lately RedHat Linux 6.2.
> 
> Recent changes
> --------------
> The only change made is a replacement NVRAM - which
> has all settings restored 
> to the same as the original (to the best of my
> knowledge). Unfortunately this 
> was done several months ago and I do not know if
> this was the cause - I 
> haven't used the CD-ROM since then until now - but I
> HAVE used the tape with 
> no problems.
> 
> Problem
> -------
> I am now unable to get data over the SCSI connection
> from the external SCSI 
> CD, although no problem is apparent with the
> internal SCSI hard-disk.
> The tape unit operates as expected, writing and
> reading data down the SCSI 
> cable to and from the internal SCSI hard-disk.
> The CD behaves as follows:-
> 
> Power up external SCSI devices.
>     No activity - as expected.
> Power up IPX.
>     SCSI devices activate briefly as system checks
> them during POST.
> Force to OpenBOOT monitor ok prompt
>     probe-scsi - all SCSI devices report correctly
> (when connected!)
>     boot cdrom - nothing happens, no CD activity, no
> boot,
>         but.....
>     boot disk - boots correctly.....
> Into Linux as root....
> 
> dmesg shows the following boot-time messages:-
> 
>     various messages - no problems.....
> scsi0 : Sparc ESP100A (NCR53C90A)
> scsi : 1 host.
>   Vendor: SEAGATE   Model: ST1480   SUN0424  Rev:
> 6266
>   Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI
> SCSI revision: 02
> Detected scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 3,
> lun 0
>   Vendor: EXABYTE   Model: EXB-8200          Rev:
> 263H
>   Type:   Sequential-Access                  ANSI
> SCSI revision: 01
>   Vendor: SONY      Model: CD-ROM CDU-8012   Rev:
> 3.1d
>   Type:   CD-ROM                             ANSI
> SCSI revision: 02
> Detected scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 6,
> lun 0
> scsi : detected 1 SCSI cdrom 1 SCSI disk total.
> Uniform CDROM driver Revision: 2.56
> esp0: target 3 [period 200ns offset 15 5.00MHz
> synchronous SCSI]
> SCSI device sda: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors=
> 843284 [411 MB] [0.4 GB]
>     various messages - no problems.....
> Detected scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 5,
> lun 0
>     various messages - no problems.....
> 
> [disconnecting external SCSI prior to boot drops
> devices - as expected]
> 
> mount will NOT mount CD-ROM - reporting "no medium
> found"
> but TCD 1.0.51 will happily read and play audio
> CDs.....
>     .....whilst ignoring data CDs as one would
> expect.
> Also, the caddy can be ejected by software.
> 
> Having attempted to mount a data CD, the following
> error messages are logged:-
> 
> kernel: sr0: CDROM not ready.  Make sure there is a
> disc in the drive.
> kernel: cdrom: open failed.
> kernel: sr0: CD-ROM error: Info fld=0x40, Current
> sr0 b:00: sense key Illegal 
> Request
> kernel: Additional sense indicates Illegal mode for
> this track
> kernel: command was: Request Sense 00 00 00 10 00
> 
> Having attempted to play a data CD as audio, I get
> the following:-
> 
> kernel: CD-ROM I/O error: dev 0b:00, sector 64
> kernel: isofs_read_super: bread failed, dev=0b:00,
> is o_blknum=16, block=32
> kernel: sr0: CDROM (ioctl) reports ILLEGAL REQUEST.
> 
> Attempting to read directly from the drive as
> follows:-
> 
>     dd if=/dev/cdrom of/dev/null bs=512 (correct
> block size!)
> 
> .....produces nothing - not even drive-light
> activity.
> This intimates that the kernel is not able to
> communicate with the device.
> /dev/cdrom is linked to /dev/scd0 - both have read
> and write permission.
> 
> /etc/fstab has the appropriate entries for iso9660
> The kernel is the correct version (ie the compile
> that used to work with the 
> CD)
> The compiled devices are as follows:-
> 
> Character devices:
>   1 mem
>   2 pty
>   3 ttyp
>   4 ttyS
>   5 cua
>   7 vcs
>   9 st
>  10 misc
>  11 kbd
>  14 sparcaudio
>  29 fb
>  36 netlink
> 128 ptm
> 136 pts
> 162 raw
> 
> Block devices:
>   1 ramdisk
>   2 fd
>   8 sd
>   9 md
>  11 sr
>  65 sd
>  66 sd
> 
> .....and I presume sr is the CD-ROM, sr0, as shown
> during boot-up.
> 
> Also - the iso9660 filesystem was compiled
> correctly, /proc/filesystems looks 
> like:-
> 
>         ext2
> nodev   proc
> nodev   nfs
>         iso9660
> nodev   devpts
> 
> .....which seems OK.
> 
> So - what the !*#~@ have I done wrong, and how do I
> extricate myself?
> Some of the faq pointed me in useful directions (as
> you can see from above) 
> but I am now banging my head against a wall!
> N!k
> _______________________________________________
> SunHELP maillist  -  SunHELP at sunhelp.org
> http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/sunhelp


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