HP A7298A Troubleshooting Guide download pdf

Mediainit(1) format operation fails to media

Problem:

In certain scenarios, format operation initiated using the mediainit(1) command fails as the

format ioctl (SIOC_FORMAT) issued by mediainit(1) fails to format the storage media.

This format failure has been seen with JBOD devices DS2405, DS2100, DS2110, DS2120 and

msa30 while connected through the following interface cards but may not be limited to these

cards.

 HP-UX FC Tachlite HBAs (A5158A, A6795A)

 HP-UX FC Qlogic HBAs (A6826A, AB465A, A9782A, A7538A, A9784A, AD194A,

AB429A, AB378A, AB379A, AB379B, AB378B, AD193A, 403619-B21, AD300A,

AE311A, AH401A, AH400A, 451871-B21)

 HP-UX Ultra320 HBA (A7173A, AB290A)

This issue is caused due to target not responding to Diagnostic disk monitor commands while

SCSI format is in progress. The error recovery of above mentioned HBA’s terminates all

outstanding commands on the target and hence mediainit(1) command fails. This failure

renders the size of the medium as zero, which makes the medium unusable.

For example, in the scenario mentioned below, mediainit(1) fails to format the disk and the

subsequent diskinfo(1M) issued on the same disk reports the disk size as zero.

# mediainit -v /dev/rdsk/c20t6d0

mediainit: initialization process starting

...mediainit: locking SCSI device

mediainit: initializing media

............................mediainit: initialize media command failed.

# diskinfo /dev/rdsk/c20t6d0

SCSI describe of /dev/rdsk/c20t6d0:

vendor: HP 36.4G

product id: ST336607LC

type: direct access

size: 0 Kbytes

bytes per sector: 512

Affected OS Versions:

- HP-UX 11.23 (all revisions)

- HP-UX 11.31 (all revisions)

Cause:

This problem is seen when a receive diagnostics or an inquiry command is sent to the disk when

the mediainit(1) initiated format is in progress. The error recovery process in the different

drivers fails all commands to the media including the mediainit(1) format command due to

the time out of the diagnostics/inquiry command.

1 2 3 4

Workaround: 2

Summary of Contents

Page 1

Mediainit(1) format operation fails to mediaProblem:In certain scenarios, format operation initiated using the mediainit(1) command fails as theformat

Page 2 - Workaround:

Workaround:Method I: Format using diagnostic format utility instead of mediainit(1)You can format using the diagnostic format utility instead of media

Page 3

Method II: Disable Online diagnostics before executing mediainit(1)A. Disable using monconfig(1M)1) Shutdown diagnostic with monconfig.2) Check if the

Page 4

In addition, if Serviceguard is configured to use hardwareevent monitoring to determine the health of your system, thendisabling monitoring may cause