Hi DoN!

>> (This is the fourth time I've tried to post this article! It was written
>> this late morning.)
>
> Hmm ... where was the problem?

I believe it was where my USENET is hosted.

I use trn as my newsreader. And, I currently have my NNTPSERVER
environment variable set to isp5.newshosting.com. (RoadRunner a couple of
months ago stopped hosting USENET, but Bright House then provided a
service. I have always used NNTP news.)

Anyway, after about a minute (or more) delay, it said Remote Error.

The fourth time I tried posting it, it worked.

> Look on the back. You would either have a 13W3 connector (DB-25
>size, but thee coax pins, and ten single conductor pins) in the first or
>second slot under the audio slot, or a card with a VGA style 15-pin D
>series connector in one of the bottom four slots. Whatever your monitor
>plugs into. Sun calls these "framebuffers", while other just call them
>"graphics cards". If you *have* one, and you're getting the error
>message, it may have been damaged. You might try pulling it, as long as
>you are using a plain ASCII terminal for the console instead of the Sun
>keyboard and monitor. As long as you don't have a Sun keyboard plugged
>in, you don't need the monitor anyway. :-)

Yes. I have a 13W3 connector, in the "0" slot near the bottom with
what looks like a monitor symbol next to it. And, I have an adapter that
allows use of a VGA (a "regular" PC) monitor), which is what I'm using.

I do have a monitor and a keyboard plugged into appropriate slots on
the back of the Ultra 30. In fact, I had never connected a terminal to
TTYA or TTYB until I did so, responding to one of your early replies to me
after the lightning strike.

> You said something below about the monitor -- so you probably
>do. As long as it works to display the system's status on boot with a
>keyboard connected, you can perhaps ignore the error message.

It displays the systems status on boot, and then provides a login.
With the "disk" drive I'm using now, it is an ASCII-style login prompt. I
can type root or barry and log into it, normally. (With my "disk1", the
larger hard drive, after it boots it displays the Common Desktop graphical
login. I didn't install the graphical stuff the first time I installed
Solaris, because it was only a 4.2G disk.)

I am ignoring it -- at least right now! :-)

>> I get:
>>
>><<>>
>> 0 PCI 33 1 network-SUNW,hme
>><<>>
>
> What about any qfe possible entries?

Good question! :-D

>>>So you should see five of these -- one for the hme0 in the system board,
>>>and the other four from the qfe card.
>>
>> Nope. Only one!
>>
>> (The path_to_inst file had entries for them all, but not that
>> command.)
>
> Interesting. What numbers did the path_to_inst file have? (It
>is made more difficult by my not having a system running Solaris 8, or a
>system with both Solaris and a QFE card installed to compare.)

Here is an excerpt of six lines from my path_to_inst file:

<<>>
"/pci@1f,4000/pci@2/SUNW,qfe@2,1" 2 "qfe"
"/pci@1f,4000/pci@2/SUNW,qfe@3,1" 3 "qfe"
"/pci@1f,4000/pci@2/SUNW,qfe@0,1" 0 "qfe"
"/pci@1f,4000/pci@2/SUNW,qfe@1,1" 1 "qfe"
"/pci@1f,4000/network1,1" 0 "hme"
"/pci@1f,4000/SUNW,hme@2,1" 1 "hme"
<<>>

>> Yes. A "man qfe" shows a man page with "qfe - SUNW,qfe Quad
>> Fast-Ethernet device driver" under NAME.
>
> Read through it, and see if it mentions anything special needed.
>Perhaps it is something which should be in /opt/SUNWqfe which is only
>installed if the card is detected during installation, just like the
>/opt/SUNWleo for a particular framebuffer in the SPARCstation 5 which I
>am still running.

Reading through it...

I see:

<<>>
The qfe driver is a "style 2" data link service provider. All M_PROTO and
M_PCPROTO type messages are interpreted as DLPI primitives. Valid DLPI
primitives are defined in . Refer to dlpi(7P) for more
information. An explicit DL_ATTACH_REQ message by the user is required to
associate the opened stream with a particular device (ppa). The ppa ID is
interpreted as an unsigned long data type and indicates the corresponding
device instance (unit) number.

Devices

The driver returns an error (DL_ERROR_ACK) if the ppa field value does not
correspond to a valid device instance number for this system. The device
is initialized on first attach and de-initialized (stopped) at last
detach.
<<>>

I can't say that I see anything like "this is needed". I excerpted
the above because the DL_ERROR_ACK are the errors I am getting.

It mentions the /dev/qfe "file", which I have.

I do NOT have a "SUNWqfe" under /opt. The only things I have under
/opt that starts with SUNW are:

<<>>
SUNWconn
SUNWebnfs
SUNWits
SUNWrtvc
SUNWste
<<>>

Do you still have the install CDs or DVDs?

Yes.

So, look on it/them for SUNWqfe? I'm checking, now...



At first, when I inserted the Solaris 8 Documentation CD, the drive
drawer stayed closed. But, I couldn't see anything that happened. I
checked "mount" and I couldn't see anything different.

I googled, and tried various things (seeing stuff like volcheck,
which didn't seem to be for CDs, to me).

I then touched the button on the CD drive, and removed that CD, and
inserted the Solaris 8 Installation CD. (What I'm looking for is a way to
see whether something [such as SUNWqfe] is among what is to install, and I
want to install that only, instead of installing all of Solaris. I've
ONLY used it, twice, to install Solaris from scratch at this point.)

But, when I place any CD in the drive now, and close the drawer (by
either touching the button again or gently pushing on the open drawer
until it closes), after a few seconds, the drawer opens again.

I have a vague memory of when I got the larger hard drive, I
installed Solaris from scratch using these CDs. (And, I had installed
Solaris from these CDs when I first installed it, in 2003.)

I seem to recall that the last time, I had to allow the air
compressor to pump full of air, and I gave a good "air squirt" around the
CD drive. Then, it worked!

But, I did it, this time, and the drawer does NOT stay closed.

Is there any way I can get the SUNWqfe that I guess may have been put
in the /opt directory if I had had the QFE card installed when I last
installed Solaris, other than on the CD?

The ONLY THING I need at this point is something else to delay me
if I have to replace the CD drive!

The light blinks, as normal, when the drawer is closed. But, it
opens again. (Perhaps the CD is not actually "spinning up?")

Now, the drawer is even opening again even if I close it with NO CD
in the drive!

Doing a find looking for qfe in file names, though, I see these:

<<>>
/var/sadm/pkg/SUNWqfed
/var/sadm/pkg/SUNWqfedx
/var/sadm/pkg/SUNWqfedu
<<>>

Might that be them, just not in /opt?

>> I got:
>>
>><<>>
>> lo0: flags=1000849 mtu 8232 index 1
>> inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000
>><<>>
>
> So *nothing* is working other than the loopback pseudo-device.
>Are the entries in /etc/path_to_inst still edited to different numbers?

No. I put it back EXACTLY THE WAY IT WAS before I edited anything!
What I have excerpted above is how they currently look.

> Add the original ethernet card back into the system (leaving the
>QFE installed and finding another slot for the original card) and do
>the:
>
> touch /reconfigure
> reboot
>
>cycle and see what happens. In particular, look at the output from
>
> ifconfig -a
>
>to see whether the card is added back.

Okay. The QFE card is in PCI slot 2. (Nothing was in 1, 3 or 4.)

I just put the original ethernet card I had in slot 4. (This was to
leave more room between the cards, for cleaning or whatever occasionally,
if by some wonderful chance they remain this way...)

I did a "boot -r".

An "ifconfig -a" shows:

<<>>
lo0: flags=1000849 mtu 8232 index 1
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000
hme2: flags=1000843 mtu 1500 index 3
inet 192.168.2.2 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.2.255
ether 8:0:20:8f:d3:67
<<>>

> Hmm ... another thing to check -- *which* slot is the QFE in?
>according to the FEH the topmost PCI slot is a 3.3V 33/66 MHz slot,
>while the other three are 5.0V 33 MHz and the QFE cards are 3.3/5V 33
>MHz so I *think* that it should work in any slot, but try it in a
>different slot anyway. Especially if it is in the topmost slot.

It was and still is in PCI slot 2. It is not in the topmost slot.

I'll wait on this and see whether you still want me to try this, in
light of what I've included in this article.

> Is your original card one of 501-4359, 501-5019, or 540-3981? If
>so, it should work in the same slots -- but who knows. Hmm ... is the
>card's connector fully seated along the length of the system board's
>connector?

I don't know. Can I tell by looking at the card? (Hmmm... looking
at the "top" of the circuit board, I see a number 3697 on a little white
sticker. That's the only thing I see, on the side I can see, other than
"Sun, Assembled in USA" on another little white sticker.)

Let me guess, there is something on the other side that indicates it?
(Now that I have in the computer!) :-D (I should have "read ahead"
before I put it in the computer, on the bottom PCI slot!) :-D

And, yes, it is fully seated. I did verify this when I put it in the
system, before I booted the first time afterward. And, it's nice. If it
IS fully seated, that screw on the end is just for a little "hold", but it
is already fully against the metal frame where the screw goes in -- if it
is "in" fully in the motherboard slot.

> Or -- could the PCI bus have been damaged by the lighting?
>Consider getting a replacement system board as the safer (and surer) way
>to go.

I don't *think* so. At least, when I got home on Tuesday, July 22
(it will be ONE MONTH tomorrow!), the Linux was still connected to the
Sun's port via the card I just placed back in. And, mutt was working.
And, I had 27 new emails, which I read, deleted, switched folders, etc.

At least, the PCI slot that contained this card (which was in PCI
slot 2, where the QFE is now) still appeared to be working.

I'll put what you had at this point in a "Non-Sun-Stuff" email. :-)

However, I'm going to go out, before it gets darker, even though it
is currently raining hard, and remove the hurricane shutters. Fay is
FINALLY moving again! And, none of the computer models show her getting
too close to where I live. And, now that she is finally heading westward
over Florida, she surely is not likely to strengthen. So, it may be up to
60-mph winds, but that's okay, and just continued lots of rain.

My mother HATES the hurricane shutters up, because they block her
ability to see out! :-D I am not confident that we're not going to need
them, so I'm going out to take them down.

Tomorrow morning, I take my mother to the Filutowski Cataract and
Laser Institute. They'll check her eye (just over one week since the
surgery) and confirm for us that Wednesday of next week, she'll have her
right eye done. (This was not "in stone" until they saw her again, this
week.)

Barry
--
Barry L. Bond | http://home.cfl.rr.com/os9barry/
Software Engineer, ITT Corporation | (My personal home web page, last
bbondATcfl.rr.com | updated February 17, 2005)