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- Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!cf-cm!news
- From: spxpmf@thor.cf.ac.uk (Phillip Fayers)
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin
- Subject: Large Disk problem on Sun4
- Message-ID: <17963.9208141108@thor.cf.ac.uk>
- Date: 14 Aug 92 11:08:14 GMT
- Sender: news@cm.cf.ac.uk (Network News System)
- Organization: Physics Dept. University of Wales, Cardiff
- Lines: 37
- X-Mailer: Cardiff Computing Maths PP Mail Open News Gateway
-
- Hi all,
- I've had a problem with a system recently and I have an idea
- that I've worked out what is wrong - I need to find out whether I'm
- right or not. The problem is this:
-
- Machine: Sun 4/360 (sun4/sun4 arch)
- OS: SunOs 4.1.1
-
- The system crashed a few times with a memory error, telling me
- which SIMM has the error, this isn't the main problem, we only thought
- it was. The SIMM is definately dud and is going to be replaced. The
- Prolem occured when the machine reboots after crashing, it failed to
- `fsck' our main user disk (a 1.4 GByte Seagate). This disk was in two
- partitions, one of 1200 MB (the user data) and one of ~200 MB (swap
- space), the swap space was `at the back' of the disk.
- When crashing the machine claims to do a memory dump but when
- rebooting `savecore' fails to find it. This disk worked happily on the
- machine previously as a single 1400 MB partition which was filled (at
- times) to more than 1200 MB. Reformatting the drive on this machine
- failed twice - with no error messages, it just died part way through -
- reformatting on an IPC (4.1.1 patched for large disks) worked.
-
- It appears that the machine can handle filesystems > 1GB BUT
- when it attempts to write a memory dump to the swap partition it writes
- to the wrong place! Instead of starting to write at the end of the disk
- (the 1400th MB) and working back it appears to be doing the dump in the
- middle of our data disk, wiping out information as it does so. So the
- kernel has been fixed to understand >1GB filesystems but the code which
- does a memory dump has not.
-
- Am I on the right track ?
- Can anyone confirm on deny my suspicions ?
-
- --
-
- Phillip Fayers email: fayers@cardiff.ac.uk
- Sun admin/support/programming phone: 0222 874000 x 5282 (UK)
-