From: wwf@doe.carleton.ca (W. Walter Fergusson)
Subject: Is SUNINSTALL destroying my disk format?
Keywords: Xylogics, SMD, xd, suninstall, format, cylinder header error
Organization: Carleton University, Electronics Department.
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1992 21:56:41 GMT


I am having difficulty getting 4.1.1 up on my SUN3/260.  The problems
come in two steps - formatting and installation.  Any help, pointers,
or even replies like "Yup, I've seen that before, but I don't know
what I did to fix it" would be appreciated.

Specifics:
Sun3/260 - 	SCSI controller with tape drive and 200Meg disk
		xylogics 7035? VME/SMD controller with 
		"Hitachi DK815-10" disk.
		2 8-meg memory boards
		VME color board

I have SunOS4.1.1 installed on the borrowed 200Meg SCSI drive.  I am
trying to install SunOS4.1.1 on the hitachi drive.  The hitachi drive
has just been installed.  It worked fine in the other system it was in.

PART 1: Format problems:
------------------------

	When I try to format the disk with the original manufactures
defect list I get a "bad block table overflow" message about half way
through the 276 defects.  To solve this problem I format the drive
with no defects.  It then complains about "cylinder header errors" in
the first cylinder and the spare cylinders (1735 and 1736).  After
exhaustive coaxing by formatting first some middle cylinders, then the spare
cylinders and finally the first cylinders I can label the disk.
During this procedure there are many "cylinder header errors".
Finally another format of the disk with the original manufacture
defect list finally gets a disk that is formatted and error free.
This procedure also requires me to turn the power off to the disk at
some stage (I do not remember when).  The "cylinder header errors" are
repeatable during each run through this procedure.

My questions are this:
	1) Why do I have to format so many times to get the disk
format to work?
	2) What is the cause of a "cylinder header error"?  It even
seems to occur after I format the cylinders in question.
	3) Is there an easier way to do this?
	4) Is my disk (or controller) dying?

PART 2: SUNINSTALL problems:
----------------------------
	After the procedure outlined in part 1 I am ready to install
4.1.1 on a formatted disk.  Here are the problems I have encountered.

	A) When using suninstall to repartition the disk, I get some
"hard ecc read errors" when installing the operating system.  A format
after this happens exposes a "cylinder header error" at this position.
	B) When using suninstall to put the software on an existing
partition I complete an install.  When I reboot from the new xd0a partition
vmunix boots, but the file system seems to be corrupted.  All block
#16 of each partition suninstall touched has a "hard ecc read error".
fsck will not fix this problem.  Running surface analysis from format
shows a "cylinder header error".
	C) Starting from scratch I formatted the disk (about the 11th
time!).  After all the steps in part 1, I got a file system on all but
the root partition.  I filled up each file system until there was no
room left (110%).  I read all the information from each partition.  I
fsck'd each partition.  Only two "soft read errors" occurred.  I could
not reproduce either.  I redid part B.  The same errors occurred!

Additional info:
	i) I know what I am doing.  I installed SunOS4.1.1 on a
Sun3/280 with a VME/SMD controller, but without a scsi drive a week
ago.  The installation was fine.

	ii) I have partitioned my disk to carry:
partition	file system
a		/
b		(swap)
c		(disk)
d		/var
e		/p
f		(none)
g		/usr
h		/home

Questions:
	1) Could this be sun bug #1064779 "dataless install corrupts
file system"?
	2) Has anyone seen problems like this?
	3) Recommendations?
	4) I plan to install the software by hand (uncompressing and
untarring each media file).  What extra stuff do I have to do to get
the system up after this.  I can think of fstab, installboot, vmunix,
hostname, ...

PART 3:  Thank you:
-------------------
	If you have got this far, I thank you for your patience.  If
you have any information for me I would be most grateful if you send
it my way.  

	If you are interested in any of this information that I will
be getting, please mail me.  I will send you whatever I get or you
need.

Walter
--
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W. Walter Fergusson | The following quote is boring.
wwf@doe.carleton.ca | The previous quote is not that exciting either.
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Winner of the hairy chested regexp award!
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