Conference 7.286::fddi

1634.0. "unreliable satelite boot,defta-ua,gigaswitch" by 51559::ARVID () Tue Mar 21 1995 08:13

	Need som help on sattelite booting--->Alpha server with DEFTA-UA...


   I was at a customer site and installed Gigaswitch,DEChub900, DEFTA-UA and
various DEChub900 / DEChub90 modules.Below I will try to make a drawing of
how this looks, but I will explain some symptoms.

   Before I started everything was connected by ethernet. The server, an A3400
has VMS AXP V6.1, I installed a DEFTA-UA and upgraded the A3400 firmware to
V6.0. The satelittes (6) are A3300's, nothing was installed in them, firmware
was not upgraded. I purged the old decnet line/circ info and added the new 
info (circ service enabled,server). I defined lat$device as fca0: (server).


   When connecting the A3400 to FDDI / Gigaswitch we see the following:

- satelittes try to boot, but get timeout / retry, server logs load request

- satelittes get initial load from server but seem to crash shortly after
connection to the system disk server (A3400) "invalid execption"

- I think a message was:"failed to initialize" some file / driver...

- satelittes complete the boot every now and then

- the "PHY" LED on the DEFTA-UA goes steady green early in boot, but we have
seen that suddenly all LED's on the DEFTA-UA are off and then the connection
is down. Is the DEFTA-UA shaky or is this behavior the result of some other
fault somewhere ? The errorlog logs "fatal error detected by datalink" and
"device attention" / "invalid data" (FCA0).

	I will try to draw what this looks like:


						      |-->Alpha2100
satellite-->non-DEC-HUB--->DECswitch900---->Gigaswitch--->Alpha3400
  		       |-->non-DEC-bridge-->non-DEC-HUB-->DECswitch900-->Gigasw

	This might be difficult to understand but anyway the questions are:

- are there any tips about VMS versions or firmware versions concerning
server or satelittes ?

- any tips about VMS parameters or buffer sizes ?

- could my DEFTA-UA be rotten ?

- the pathflow in the "drawing" above indicates two paralell paths from
satelite to server, should this be avoided ?

- are there any considerations about twisted-pair FDDI cable from server to
Gigaswitch ?

- any other ideas about why satelite booting is unreliable ?


	grateful for any help...

	Arvid Nes
	Digital, Norway

    Hello,
    
    I had the same problem with a DEFTA LED going from green to off, it was
    corrected by the latest AXP LAN patch kit.  The booting problem may
    also be related.  Download and install the the below patch kits on all
    Alpha system disks:
    
    	AXPLAN03_061 -  Alpha LAN Drivers
    	AXPBOOT04_061 - Alpha V6.1 BOOT ECO Summary
    
    The DEFTA I was working on was failing under load with cluster SCA
    traffic. 
             
    Good Day,
    John Sobecki
    CSC/Colorado