SUMMARY: SCSI disk in Ultra 5

From: Frederic Piard (Frederic.Piard@lexiquest.fr)
Date: Wed Nov 22 2000 - 10:13:52 CST


Dear all,

It took a long time to exploit the information I receveid, but it was
usefull.
First of all it is uselees to use the new SCSI 3 card if there is only one
or two disks attached to the interface. The disks will not be able to use
such a large bandwith (160 Mb/s). SCSI 2 and even SCSI 1 should be
sufficient.
Second, I haven't found any cheaper (because widely sold) Scsi card fron
Tekram or Adaptec, able to be use in a Sun hardware with Solaris 7. The only
vendors are Antares and IntraServer who are specialized in Sun hardware.

So I have changed my mind and I have bought an SCSI 2 card (the Antares Pcs
Scsi U2WL, costs around $ 450) who is cheaper than the new Scsi 3 card and
really adequate as I will just have one Scsi disk attached to this card.

As Sun does not support SCSI 2 nor SCSI 3 in Solaris, it is not possible to
install Solaris directly from the Cd to the Scsi disk. I had to install
Solaris to the Ide drive, add the Scsi adapter drivers and transfer the "/"
and "/usr" from the Ide disk to the Scsi disk. The first time it seems not
an easy task, but the second time it is Ok. I will add a email from the
Antares support who explain the task.

It is not very clear if the Scsi disk may be monted inside the Ultra 5.
There is enough room, but it may become too hot to be reliable ...

And it is a general consensus that this upgrade is a great improvement to
the Ultra 5, especially if the machine swaps.
  
I wish to especially thanks :
 - John Sullivan [jgs@perifitech.com]
 - Carl Munio [cmunio@antares.com] from the Antares support

Thank also to :
 - Al Hopper [al@logical-approach.com]
 - James Ashton [James.Ashton@syseng.anu.edu.au]
 - Dobson, Jed [jed@wgtech.com]
 - David L. Markowitz [David.Markowitz@litronic.com]
 - Thomas Anders [anders@hmi.de]

 - Frederic Piard, responsable des plateformes informatiques.
 - LexiQuest, 261 rue de Paris, 93556 Montreuil cedex, France
 - <Fax:+33 (0)1 49 93 39 39> <Tel:+33 (0)1 49 93 39 33>
 - <http://www.lexiquest.com>
-----Original Message-----
From: Frederic Piard [mailto:Frederic.Piard@lexiquest.fr]
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2000 9:37 AM
To: Sun Manager List (E-mail)
Cc: Frederic Piard
Subject: SCSI disk in Ultra 5

Dear all,

We want to speed up our Sun Ultra 5 by adding a SCSI card, a SCSI disk an
booting on it.
As the new SCSI 3 (160 Mb/s) is on the market, I will be happy to use some
SCSI-3 devices.

It appears that Sun does not sell any SCSI 3 card. I have poked around
Tekram and Adaptec for this card, but they haven't any driver for Solaris on
Sparc platform. They just have some for Solaris on Intel plateform !!!

I have found one from Antares the PCI-SCSI 2U3WL
<http://www.antares.com/52-0076.htm>. I want to use it with some Ibm SCSI 3
disk.

Does any of you have any (good or bad) experience with this card ?
Do you know if I can easily put the disk inside the Ultra 5 ?

More generaly, have you noticed some increasing in performance when using
SCSI disk in Ultra 5 ?

Thank You.


attached mail follows:


Hello,

I'll give you a brief overview...

Sun doesn't support anything other than Ultra1 SCSI. Very unfortunate since
performance specially in system disks directly affects perceived performance
by the user.

We took the Sun "glm" driver and added FAST40, FAST80, and FAST160 bits to
the options field thereby creating a new driver which we called "glm2".
This new driver functions exactly the same as the initial "glm" driver but
now recognizes adapter cards with higher bandwidth and smart interfaces.

When you're building a system from scratch, the loader looks only at "glm"
interfaces or Ultra1 SCSI and below. The new hardware isn't seen since it
has different ID properties and any devices attached to the new hardware are
ignored. So, to build a new system from scratch on the SCSI bus from which
you intend to boot from, you need to:

        Build the OS on an interface that Sun recognizes.
        Load the new driver on the target disk.
        Install the new controller and reconfigure with "boot -r".

Once you have a system built which recognizes the interface and have it
configured to your needs do the following:

1. install a fresh copy of Solaris to the onboard IDE disk.
Select only a root (/) file system and a swap area to ease #4 below.

2. pkgadd the ANTRglm2(x) package, shut down the machine, add the disks
to the LVD interface and reboot. You'll then see disks.

3. Create a file system and swap area on a disk hung off the Antares card
and
mount it on /mnt.

4. Use ufsdump/ufsrestore to populate the new file system.
/usr/lib/fs/ufs/ufsdump 0f - /|(cd /mnt;/usr/lib/fs/ufs/ufsrestore rf -)

5. Install a boot block on the new disk XXXXXX.
installboot /usr/platform/sun4u/lib/fs/ufs/bootblk /dev/rdsk/XXXXXXXX

6. Edit /mnt/etc/vfstab to change the swap and root file system to reflect
the change to XXXXXXX. Remember that there are multiple columns for the disk
entry (raw and block) in vfstab for file systems.

7. Halt the system and at the "ok" prompt, change the boot variable to
point to the new drive. For example, the following:

        setenv boot-device /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/scsi@2/disk@1,0:a

        scsi@2 points to the controller on PCI slot 2
        disk@1,0 points to disk with SCSI ID of 1 and LUN 0
        :a points to slice which contains the boot block

Remove the disk that was on the onboard IDE. (Do *not* just use dd to copy
disks. You won't get the results you expect if you do that.

Regards,

Carl

-----Original Message-----
From: Frederic Piard [mailto:Frederic.Piard@lexiquest.fr]
Sent: Monday, November 20, 2000 10:18 AM
To: support@antares.com
Cc: Frederic Piard
Subject: Booting from the Antares Pci Scsi-U2WL on a Sun Ultra 5

Dear Antares Support,

I have bought an Antares Pci Scsi-U2WL (Name: PCI-LVD-UWS / PCI-0068, S-N°:
AMS5A0184691D001028), an Ibm U3 Scsi Drive LVD SE (Model DDYS-T18350).

I have installed the Antares card and the Ibm disk in the Sun Ultra 5.
I have first installed Solaris 7 on the Sun Ide drive and installed the
specific driver for the Antares Scsi card. Everything was fine : I was able
to access the Scsi drive.

As my goal is to bypass the clumsy Ide drive I want to boot directly on the
Scsi drive.
I have installed the Sun patch 106121-13 who upgrade the boot prom to it's
latest release (3.27). But when I boot from the Sun Solaris 7 Cdrom (Dated
11/99 Revision A), I cannot access the Scsi disk. When the install program
asks for the destination drive it does not offers me the new Scsi drive. My
only choice is the Ide drive.

Haw can I boot from this Scsi disk so I will be allowed to remove the Ide
drive.

Thank you.

 - Frederic Piard, responsable des plateformes informatiques.
 - LexiQuest, 261 rue de Paris, 93556 Montreuil cedex, France
 - <Fax:+33 (0)1 49 93 39 39> <Tel:+33 (0)1 49 93 39 33>
 - <http://www.lexiquest.com>

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