News Group Posts

dead tape drive stops netconfig, nic,

network card install

From: brian@aljex.com (Brian K. White)
Subject: thanks
Date: 24 Nov 2002 06:27:06 -0800

I would just like to express appreciation for a recent good experience
which was completely due to the existence of this group and the fact
that people actually post helpful comments to it, and the fact that
archives of it may be searched.

I had a OSR 5.0.5 box that inexplicably stopped "seeing" the internet.
it worked fine for all in-house networking. pc's connected normally
via any protocol I cared to try, the ip provider and 3 in-house
routers were all doingtheir jobs properly, tested by changing a router
so it forwarded incoming traffic to another IP and was able to come in
to that pc from internet, just the server could not ping external ip's
or hostnames, nor could anything from the internet see the server, and
it all was working fine days before and for over a year. I went over
all the network settings on the server several times, everything was
right, at least, everything was the same way I do it on all my boxes,
and they've always worked fine so far.

so, having proven the internet & routers were working, and not seeing
anything I could change on the server but having nothing but the
server to blame, I tried uninstalling the nic drivers and tcp/ip
protocols from the server, and installing the latest version of the
nic drivers from the web (first the sco version, then the manufacturer
version if that didn't work, if in fact there were more than one
likely candidate.

well after uninstalling and rebooting, custom hung while trying to
install the new driver. It's 7:30pm on friday night by now. "oh crap"
they could work when I got here, now they can't!

well I go over to neighboring PC, spend about *5 minutes* in "google
groups"
I see several other reported cases of custom hanging, unkillable
sofmgr processes, most just like me after uninstalling something...

several of the responses mention possible problem with the tape drive

I would have *never* thought to look in that direction, but given any
hint at all, even if it was not as well grounded as these were, it was
certainly easy enough to look into it just for the heck of it. well
sure enough, the tape drive was dead. trying to use tar or "tape"
commands caused unkillable processes just like I've seen on every
other dead tape drive.

reboot, unconfigure the tape completely from the kernel, reboot, and
I'll be damned, custom installed the nic driver just as pretty as you
please.

probably wasn't 15 minutes from the time I induced a "show-stopper"
problem that was flat out beyond my immediate ability to correct, and
the time it was fixed (and as a bonus, the original problem I was
there to fix was fixed at the same time. the new drivers, or possibly
simply the act of removing-reinstalling fixed the original problem,
but the new drivers actually were different, so it was probably not
just a matter of M$ style reinstalling.)


 so, Thanks

your effort here is greatly appreciated, and I hope I can be as
helpful to someone else in a spot someday.
 

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