Hey all.


First I want to thank the following people for their very quick and
timely responses:


Loring Safford

Patrick Shannon

Alex de la Salle

Jared Perkins

Millard Simon

Stefan Voss

Cathy Smith

Josee Robichaud

Irene Kam

Steve Kay

Jerry Litteer

Steven Kasny

Sean Ward

Harvey Wamboldt

Ravisankar Raja

Stewart McLeod

Kitty Ferguson

Marc S. Gibian

Derek Terveer

Bismark Espinoza

Joel Lee

Bob Radvanovsky


The most common reply was that this is a sign of a disk either going bad
or gone bad.  Along with this warning sign were a couple of suggestions. 
First, bring the system down into single-user mode and do two things:
first, run format and then analyze on the hard disk.  

The next suggestion was, after running format/analyze, run fsck on the
parition in question.  I did both of these and I got no error messages. 
But, to be on the safe side, since I have Sun support, I called them at
7:30, the technician called back at 8 to check on the serial number.  She
checked the serial number, and called me back at 8:20 telling me she had
it in stock.  I got the disk at 9 and I was back on-line at 10.  Pretty
cool to get such great support from Sun.


Anyway, I digress.  Other ideas included:


>From Steven Kasny:

Check the total length of all your cables for the SCSI chain

containing that disk. I started getting similar messages when my chain

approached the 6m length limit. Also, check the cables themselves; a bad
ground can produce an error like this.



>From Harvey M Wamboldt:

(1) check the physical environment of the disk, if there are bumps

    and/or vibrations, move the disk,

(2) if the cables are suspect, get better cables,

(3) check the electrical environment, if there are motors or

    other noisy devices "nearby" electrically, consider putting

    the disk on a different or conditioned circuit,

(4) if you suspect the disk's media, consider running format,

(5) if you suspect the disk is nearing end of life (ie

    contamination, bearing wear, or lubrication loss) then the only

    thing to do is replace the drive.


Thanks again everybody.  You guys are the best!




Grant