[rescue] Disk going bad or other..?

[Skeezics Boondoggle]

On Mon, 12 Sep 2005, velociraptor wrote:

> On 9/12/05, Eric Webb wrote:
> > Can anyone give me an indication of what this may mean?  Is the disk going
> > bad, just taking its sweet time, or might I have a silly boot list to clean
> > up..?  This starts just after the PROM issues the power-on banner.
> >
> > Fatal SCSI error  at script address 258 Unexpected disconnect
> > Boot device: disk:a  File and args:
> > Fatal SCSI error  at script address 258 Unexpected disconnect
> > Fatal SCSI error  at script address 258 Unexpected disconnect
> > Fatal SCSI error  at script address 258 Unexpected disconnect
> > Fatal SCSI error  at script address 258 Unexpected disconnect
> > Fatal SCSI error  at script address 258 Unexpected disconnect
> > SunOS Release 5.9 Version Generic_118558-11 64-bit
> > Copyright 1983-2003 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All rights reserved.
> > Use is subject to license terms.
> > -
> >
> > It's coming up just fine after it comes back from the above la-la land.
> 
> I'd check /var/adm/messages and prtdiag -v to see if anything shows
> up.  If not, then you might have some "dangling" device references.
> Try running devfsadm with the '-C' switch, which invokes the "clean
> up" routines.

It's not a bad idea to try a boot -r if something has changed and the
kernel is confused, but as someone pointed out, these messages are
happening as the PROM is either probing the device tree or accessing the
disk trying to bootstrap the kernel in the first place.

You might try "set-defaults" (or Stop-D?) at the OBP.  Is this a new (to 
you) machine?  Perhaps the previous owner did something funky, like set up 
an nvramrc?  I assume you've checked your cabling and termination, etc.?

I've only had to use "set-defaults" once or twice when things got
squirrely and misbehaved, usually on machines where I'd moved a bunch of
hardware around or that came to me in some nutty state to begin with.  If
this is a machine with flash ROMs, it'd be a good idea to make sure you're
running the latest release.  (I missed the original post, but Solaris
5.9/64-bit indicates that it's a newer box, not an old sun4m, for
example.)

Good luck,

-- Chris