Solaris 10 U6 problems on Ultra 60

I have just loaded a fresh install of Solaris 10U6 on an Ultra 60.
I had earlier done upgrade installs on an Ultra 2 and Ultra 10.
Another Ultra 60 has S10U4.

The U60's are similarly configured: 2X450 CPU's 2GB memory, 18 and 73
GB disks. The U2 is the same except for 2X300 CPU's.

The first thing I notice on all the S10 U6 machines is that I do not
get a GUI login display very quickly at the end of the boot cycle.
Seems to take a couple of minutes between seeing the console login and
the display starting.

However, the U60 with the fresh install takes forever to display the
action menu in the format command. When I bring up format, it comes
right up to ask me which disk, and displays the "disk formatted"
message reasonably quickly. From there it takes about a minute to
display the warning if disk partitions are mounted, and another three
or four before it shows the menu. It will go to the partition menu
quickly, and display the partition table. On the U60 with U4, format
comes right up, and on the U2 with U6, format is slow to come up, but
only in terms of about 10-20 seconds, not minutes.

Earlier today, I installed the second GB of memory, and had problems,
so have run the machine throught the full console port diagnotics
several times today. So I don't see where there would be a hardware
problem.

Anybody got any ideas on what might be going on here?

Hank

On 2009-04-09, HankVC <> wrote:
> I have just loaded a fresh install of Solaris 10U6 on an Ultra 60.
> I had earlier done upgrade installs on an Ultra 2 and Ultra 10.
> Another Ultra 60 has S10U4.
>
> The U60's are similarly configured: 2X450 CPU's 2GB memory, 18 and 73
> GB disks. The U2 is the same except for 2X300 CPU's.
>
> The first thing I notice on all the S10 U6 machines is that I do not
> get a GUI login display very quickly at the end of the boot cycle.
> Seems to take a couple of minutes between seeing the console login and
> the display starting.
>
> However, the U60 with the fresh install takes forever to display the
> action menu in the format command. When I bring up format, it comes
> right up to ask me which disk, and displays the "disk formatted"
> message reasonably quickly. From there it takes about a minute to
> display the warning if disk partitions are mounted, and another three
> or four before it shows the menu. It will go to the partition menu
> quickly, and display the partition table. On the U60 with U4, format
> comes right up, and on the U2 with U6, format is slow to come up, but
> only in terms of about 10-20 seconds, not minutes.
>
> Earlier today, I installed the second GB of memory, and had problems,
> so have run the machine throught the full console port diagnotics
> several times today. So I don't see where there would be a hardware
> problem.
>
> Anybody got any ideas on what might be going on here?

Have you tried running "top" (you need the Software Companion
installed to have this, as it is in /opt/sfw/bin). That will show you
which processes are using the most CPU as well as the load average.

For that matter, what do the perfmeter bars look like to the
right of the "desktop controls" icon in the bottom bar? They can give a
clue of a heavily loaded system.

Are these connected to a local network? How about to the
internet itself? Have you turned off the rlogin/rsh/rexec daemons?

In my Sun Blade 2000 (I've retired my Ultra 2s and Ultra 60s),
the perfmeters show blue/red/gray (from the bottom) on the left one, and
green/red/gray on the right one with about a third to a quarter of the
top being gray. (This is with a *lot* of dtterms running.) Actual load
averages showing on the top line of "top" are 0.03, 0.03, 0.04 with 230
processes.

Hmm ... did you by any chance select (at login) the Gnome window
manager instead of CDE? It is a resource hog, and I don't run it on my
SB-2000 with two 1.2 GHz CPUs. I certainly would not run it on a pair
of 300 or 450 MHz CPUs.

As for format -- if one or more of the disks has problems (e.g.
not formatted, damaged surface, or formatted with a different block size
(e.g. for a hardware RAID system) it can take quite a while for format
to stop trying to read it.

Do you fire up format and let its menu show you the drives, or
do you start it with something like:

format c0t1d0

so it does not bother looking at other drives which you are not yet
interested in.

For that matter -- are you trying to format internal or external
drives?

Good Luck,
DoN.

--
Email: <> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

DoN. Nichols wrote:
>
> Have you tried running "top" (you need the Software Companion
> installed to have this, as it is in /opt/sfw/bin). That will show you
> which processes are using the most CPU as well as the load average.

Or the more versatile Solaris standard tool, prstat.

--
Ian Collins

In article <>,
DoN. Nichols <> wrote:
>On 2009-04-09, HankVC <> wrote:
>>
>> However, the U60 with the fresh install takes forever to display the
>> action menu in the format command. When I bring up format, it comes
>> right up to ask me which disk, and displays the "disk formatted"
>> message reasonably quickly. From there it takes about a minute to
>> display the warning if disk partitions are mounted, and another three
>> or four before it shows the menu. It will go to the partition menu
>> quickly, and display the partition table. On the U60 with U4, format
>> comes right up, and on the U2 with U6, format is slow to come up, but
>> only in terms of about 10-20 seconds, not minutes.
>>
>
> Have you tried running "top" (you need the Software Companion
>installed to have this, as it is in /opt/sfw/bin). That will show you
>which processes are using the most CPU as well as the load average.
>
> Are these connected to a local network? How about to the
>internet itself? Have you turned off the rlogin/rsh/rexec daemons?
>
I ran prstat, the Solaris utility. Nothing is loading the system.
Format goes way down in the table, and prstat becomes the highest
load.

> Hmm ... did you by any chance select (at login) the Gnome window
>manager instead of CDE? It is a resource hog, and I don't run it on my
>SB-2000 with two 1.2 GHz CPUs. I certainly would not run it on a pair
>of 300 or 450 MHz CPUs.
>
I run CDE.

> As for format -- if one or more of the disks has problems (e.g.
>not formatted, damaged surface, or formatted with a different block size
>(e.g. for a hardware RAID system) it can take quite a while for format
>to stop trying to read it.
>
No signs of disk problems. This system had Solaris 10 U4 on it and
ran fine. I loaded S10 U6 on disk 0 as a new install, planning to
manually add the disk 1 mount points to /etc/vfstab.

> Do you fire up format and let its menu show you the drives, or
>do you start it with something like:
>
> format c0t1d0
>
Brought format up and selected the drive from its drive selection menu.
The delay problem affects both internal disks in the system.

>so it does not bother looking at other drives which you are not yet
>interested in.
>
> For that matter -- are you trying to format internal or external
>drives?
>
Nothing connected to external scsi.

Hank

In comp.unix.solaris HankVC <> wrote:
> Brought format up and selected the drive from its drive selection menu.
> The delay problem affects both internal disks in the system.

It might be handy to try trussing format with timestamps turned on and see
where it's hanging. (truss -d -o format.truss.txt format <whatever>)

Also, if you try setting NOINUSE_CHECK environment variable before running
format, does the behaviour change? ie:

env NOINUSE_CHECK=1 format <whatever>

--
Brandon Hume - hume -> BOFH.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Ca/

In article <grkuut$hei$>,
<> wrote:
>In comp.unix.solaris HankVC <> wrote:
>> Brought format up and selected the drive from its drive selection menu.
>> The delay problem affects both internal disks in the system.
>
>It might be handy to try trussing format with timestamps turned on and see
>where it's hanging. (truss -d -o format.truss.txt format <whatever>)
>
>Also, if you try setting NOINUSE_CHECK environment variable before running
>format, does the behaviour change? ie:
>
>env NOINUSE_CHECK=1 format <whatever>
>
Thanks for the suggestions. I'm thinking I may have a handle on this.
I swapped the disks from the problem U60 with another U60 running
S10U4. The problem stays with the U60 hardware.

I noticed, when booting up, that the problem U60 has OBP rev 3.17.
The good machine is flashed up to OBP 3.31. I am going to try
flashing the eeprom on the problem machine.

Only hardware differences between the two machines is that the problem
U60 was built in 1999, and does not have the fan speed mod; and the good
machine was built in 2001 and does have the fan speed mod. So far as
I know, there aren't motherboard rev issues with the U60's as there
are for the early Ultra 2's.

Hank

DoN. Nichols wrote:

>> Anybody got any ideas on what might be going on here?
>
> Have you tried running "top" (you need the Software Companion
> installed to have this, as it is in /opt/sfw/bin). That will show you
> which processes are using the most CPU as well as the load average.

prstat would be a better choice. I know top was my old favorite, but I
believe it is not as accurate on newer Solaris releases. In any case,
prstat is part of the OS and there is therefor no need to install the
companion CD

> Hmm ... did you by any chance select (at login) the Gnome window
> manager instead of CDE? It is a resource hog, and I don't run it on my
> SB-2000 with two 1.2 GHz CPUs. I certainly would not run it on a pair
> of 300 or 450 MHz CPUs.

I've got a U60 I use as a web server and while I usually only access it
by ssh or serial link, it does have the 'Sun Java Desktop' (which I
think is gnome based) and is not as slow as described.

I do run it on a Blade 2000 with 2 x 1.2 GHz and 8 GB of RAM. It is
quite acceptable performance. I certainly would not use CDE on the Blade
2000! I'm not denying CDE might be faster, but its not as nice and the
Blade 2000 is more than capable of running gnome.

--
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by others. They are leeches.

In article <grlo31$ch9$>, HankVC <> wrote:
>In article <grkuut$hei$>,
> <> wrote:
>>In comp.unix.solaris HankVC <> wrote:
>>> Brought format up and selected the drive from its drive selection menu.
>>> The delay problem affects both internal disks in the system.
>>
>>Also, if you try setting NOINUSE_CHECK environment variable before running
>>format, does the behaviour change? ie:
>>
>>env NOINUSE_CHECK=1 format <whatever>
>>
>Thanks for the suggestions. I'm thinking I may have a handle on this.
>I swapped the disks from the problem U60 with another U60 running
>S10U4. The problem stays with the U60 hardware.
>
>I noticed, when booting up, that the problem U60 has OBP rev 3.17.
>The good machine is flashed up to OBP 3.31. I am going to try
>flashing the eeprom on the problem machine.
>
I tried the NOINUSE_CHECK=1 environment variable, and it solved the
problem. I don't see that documented anywhere. It seems to affect
everything, even though the disk I wanted to look at had no mounted
partitions. With that variable set, format runs just as quickly
through all its paces as it did on Solaris 9 and before.

I did go through the exercise of updating the OBP and POST. What a
pain in the neck! Had to remove the power supply completely because
the third pin on the J2703 Berg clip header was bent. Flashing the
OBP to 3.31 made no difference in performance.

My question now is: what is the difference between this 1999 machine
and the two 2001 machines I have. All three are now configured
identically. The disks currently in the 1999 machine came out of a
2001 machine that had been running fine for over a year. The O/S on
those disks is Solaris 10 U4, so we're no longer looking at
differences between O/S rev levels. The only thing I haven't checked
is that the UPA cards are the same.

Hank

In article <49df2a8a@212.67.96.135>, Dave <> wrote:
>DoN. Nichols wrote:
>
>prstat would be a better choice. I know top was my old favorite, but I
>believe it is not as accurate on newer Solaris releases. In any case,
>prstat is part of the OS and there is therefor no need to install the
>companion CD
>
>> Hmm ... did you by any chance select (at login) the Gnome window
>> manager instead of CDE? It is a resource hog, and I don't run it on my
>> SB-2000 with two 1.2 GHz CPUs. I certainly would not run it on a pair
>> of 300 or 450 MHz CPUs.
>
>I've got a U60 I use as a web server and while I usually only access it
>by ssh or serial link, it does have the 'Sun Java Desktop' (which I
>think is gnome based) and is not as slow as described.
>
>I do run it on a Blade 2000 with 2 x 1.2 GHz and 8 GB of RAM. It is
>quite acceptable performance. I certainly would not use CDE on the Blade
>2000! I'm not denying CDE might be faster, but its not as nice and the
>Blade 2000 is more than capable of running gnome.
>
Don, I don't know why one can't run the current Solaris Gnome manager
on a full-house Ultra 60 (or an Ultra 2 2X300).

So far as I can see, it's a matter of personal preference. I dislike
Gnome rather intensely, but part of that may be that I haven't used it
much. I've used CDE ever since there was a CDE, and Solaris since 5.4
was new.

I'm probably a bit spoiled because I have a Lightwave Serverswitch KVM
That I use when configuring machines. Very obsolete, but when the
power supply gave out, I was able to get a plug-in replacement from
Mouser.

Gnome probably is the resource hog you mention. I'm still running
Solaris 9 as my primary production machine for the ISP services I
provide (primarily, a Mailman mail list processor), but need to build
a pair of new machines. For the present, those will be Solaris 10 on
Ultra 60's.

Right now I'm not particularly convinced that my upgrade path beyond
here is with Sun hardware or Solaris. But at age 74, how much longer
am I going to run a hobby ISP?

Hank

On Apr 10, 9:29 am, han...@julie.lostwells.net (HankVC) wrote:

> But at age 74, how much longer
> am I going to run a hobby ISP?

As long as the spirit is willing and the body is able!

My dad passed at 94, and he was still living in his own
house and taking good care of himself.

At 74, he'd bought himself a cane -- and never used it!
I think he just felt that "old" people were supposed to
have a cane.

:-)