From: kearns@actcon.canton.oh.us (Steve Kearns)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: PS/2 SCO XENIX woes
Keywords: PS/2,problems
Date: 23 Jul 92 21:56:18 GMT
Organization: A.C.T. Consulting, Inc.

Fellow netters,

My company installed an SCO XENIX system about 8 months ago on an old
IBM PS/2 model 80 (micro-channel architecture).  Since that time we have 
had nothing but problems; along several fronts.  Let me detail them...

HARD DISK:

We've had two major hard disk problems, but first a brief history of
the hard disk.  The system has its original 70mb ESDI drive.  When we 
initially installed XENIX, badtrk reported 2 bad tracks and locked them 
out of use.  The system ran fine for about 3 months.  Then, in February 
of this year, the system started barfing out ESDI errors at the console 
and died two hours later (the customer was ignoring the messages).  

One of my fellow employees arrived and ran badtrk; this time it found
28 bad tracks.  We allowed it to lock them out and restored their system
from the previous night's backup.

Things were fine again for a couple more months, then in April the system
again died.  This time, the customer blamed us for their problems and
had another vendor "repair" the machine; this repair involved the
same process, accept this time they reformatted the drive and completely
re-installed XENIX.  They told our customer that we had originally 
installed XENIX wrong and that there was no hardware problem (ha!).
(The customer's system crashed recently, and this time their "other
vendor" told them it was because we configured the UPS wrong; of course
this is a UPS without an auto-shutdown ability :-) ).

Strangely, after they reformatted the drive, badtrk reported no errors
at all.  About a month ago, the system again started spitting out
ESDI errors and crashed.  The errors are of the following form:

      esdi: ERROR: on fixed disk dev=1/40 block=5
	      cmd=00000002, isr=0000000C, sir=00000702
	      drive=0, sector=10, cylinder/head=1/0

      esdi: ERROR: on fixed disk dev=1/40 block=47
	      cmd=00000002, isr=0000000C, sir=00000702
	      drive=0, sector=30, cylinder/head=1/2

      esdi: ERROR: on fixed disk dev=1/40 block=38781
	      cmd=00000002, isr=0000000C, sir=00000702
	      drive=0, sector=26, cylinder/head=38/55

We've had about 60 such errors over the past eight months.  Each time
this happens, I run badtrk (intensive, non-destructive) and each time
it finds no bad tracks (the bad track table is empty).  Does anyone
know how to interpret this error message (it's on the console and in
/usr/adm/messages)?  NOTE: there is no consistency in the cylinder/head
numbers; all errors logged are unique.

My second hard disk problem deals with a Procomm Technologies SCSI 
drive and controller for the PS/2.  We purchased Procomm's XENIX
drivers and installed a 200mb drive as /usr2.  The drive works fine; for
about 3 days, then all processes which attempt to access the drive will
get "hung."  The processes are hung to the point that kill -9 will not 
even work.  I can't even shut the system down, as the shutdown eventually 
hangs and I have to power off.  I've also found that performing two or 
three df's in a row will cause the system to hang as well.

I've done about 10 rounds with Procomm Technologies who have no answers
or advice (actually, they don't even return my calls anymore).  Has any
one out there every used this configuration before?


FOXBASE:

My next category of problems is SCO Foxbase (version 2.1.1).  I am having
very unusual and inconsistent problems with Foxbase.  Strangely, I have
never been able to replicate these problems on XENIX running on an ISA
machine nor on our Altos 2000 machine.  Problems:

    - a program which works for days, weeks, months, will suddenly 
      develop a "memory variable not found" error message.  Syntax 
      wise the programs are fine; I've been over them a thousand times.  
      It seems that Foxbase is losing some of its internal variables
      (yes, I've changed all my assignments which used '=' to STORE's).

    - I sometimes get "file in use" while trying to open a database.  
      Other process will have the database open, but no exclusive
      opens are ever being done.  I'm very careful not use any database
      operations which lock the entire database.

    - Every now and then, especially when printing, a user will get 
      kicked all the way out of Foxbase with an "Invalid Signal"
      message (no, they didn't hit the break key).

Like I said, I've only had these problems on the PS/2 MCA machine; never
in DOS or on an ISA box.


Any help or insight offered will be greatly appreciated.  
Thanks in advance.

steve
-- 
Steve Kearns              A.C.T. Consulting, Inc.                  216-455-1444

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