🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <D8Fsos.1D0@bokonon.UUCP>, stephen@bokonon.UUCP says...
>
>   I just inherited a client this week who appears to have a long
>history of data corruption on their server.  I'm still working on
>the problem and doing all the maintenance stuff that their previous
>consultants didn't do (like what?  oh, little things like performance
>tuning, using current drivers, stuff like that).  From this
>background, when the client tells me that they've observed
>such-and-such, to some degree I have to take their word for it,
>so take this article's information with a grain of salt.
>
>   The server runs NetWare 3.12, 5 user, no patches, no upgrades,
>(until yesterday) no tuning, nothing.  It's a Pentium-75 clone
>with 16 MB of RAM, an ISA Ethernet card (sorry ... I don't recall
>the make), and a PCI Adaptec host adapter with the AIC-7870
>chipset.  The server is fed from an APC SmartUPS (I forget the
>rating) which, thorugh PowerChute, indicates that their power is
>quite clean (it has its own dedicated circuit and breaker) and
>that the load is about 20% of what the UPS can handle.
>
>   Workstations used to run VLM 1.10; they're now up to current
>(from the 1.21 install kit, which seems to install 1.20), with
>3C509 cards.  All workstations run DOS; one runs Windows
>occasionally but that's not related to what's happening.
>
>   Backups are done from a workstation using Cheyenne ArcSolo 2.2
>for DOS through an Adaptec 152x card (using Cheyenne's driver,
>not ASPI); I don't recall what tape drive they use.
>
>   The only application they run is MAS90 accounting software.
>Most of the time, everything works very nicely.  However, they
>tell me that once in a while, files will vanish during the
>backup or will go sparse.  From the backup logs, it does appear that
>at least the vanishing occurs during the backup/compare process,
>as ArcSolo will complain during the compare that a file is on
>the tape but not on the drive.  No damage appears to occur to the
>volume and no problems are noted in the system error log.  They
>say that turning off compare after verify makes the problem go
>away, though I don't know if that's true or if it just stops
>them from noticing.
>
>   They also tell me that if they use XCOPY with the verify option to
>make backups to another directory, several files go sparse; if they
>just use XCOPY without verifying, the files remain intact and
>unmangled.  They have only tried this once so I don't know if
>it's repeatable or semi-repeatable.
>
>   I've looked at their workstations and server and can't see
>anything too far out of the ordinary.  They will soon be getting
>a collection of patches and upgrades for the server, and I'll
>be replacing things like AIC7870.DSK version 1.00 with more recent
>versions.  I'm not sure this will fix the problem, though, and
>I don't 100% trust their troubleshooting skills.  Unfortunately,
>the problem is intermittent and so unless the XCOPY trick works
>repeatably I can't force it to happen before my eyes (I didn't
>get to try this while I was there, as they only discovered it
>after I had left).
>
>   Any ideas?
>--
>stephen@bokonon.UUCP                     ...!{xrtll,gts.org}!bokonon!stephen
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Stephen M. Dunn, CNE, ACE, Sr. Systems Analyst, United System Solutions Inc.
>104 Carnforth Road, Toronto, ON, Canada M4A 2K7          (416) 750-7946 x251

Make sure that are using the very latest ODI and VLM drivers.  VLMUP2, WINDR2 
and VLMFX2 are the files on Novell's FTP site..

Contact 3Com and make sure you are using the very latest 3c509 driver.

Make sure you are using the latest LAN driver on the server.  For NetWare 3.12, 
you should load the NetWare 4 version of the LAN drivers, not the NetWare 3.11 
versions.  Two files, the Ethernet Topology Support Module (ETHERTSM) and the 
Media Support Module (MSM) allow this to happen.  Make sure they are the latest 
also.

Contact Cheyenne and explain the problem to them.  It may be related to 
ArcSolo, but I doubt it.

Hope one of these helps.
-- 
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