i've got a 599-2317
http://images.andale.com/f2/111/129/...1AA942F4 .jpg
that keeps timing out, then resetting when under heavy load. it's got 6
18G 10k rpm (Seagate i think) drives in it configured in a stripe and
it's connected to an Adaptec 2940. OS is FreeBSD.

i also have a DEC 7 bay enclosure like:
http://i2.ebayimg.com/03/i/06/3e/dd/78_1.JPG
but mine has 2 power supplies and 6 drives. the drives are identical in
model to the ones in the Sun enclosure. i tried connecting this one in
place of the Sun one and it works like a champ.

it seems to be heat related because after it hangs it will continue
to hang every 10 seconds or so while data is still being dumped to or
read from. if the process generating the IO is stopped for a while then
restarted it will run for about 10 minutes before starting the cycle
over again.

has anyone else experienced any issues with this enclosure or have
any ideas how to solve/get around the problem?

--
- - james <at> hal-pc.org - -

The (Microsoft) X-Box 2
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That's almost as funny as MSN and Hotmail
running on FreeBSD for so many years
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

According to james <at>:
> i've got a 599-2317
> http://images.andale.com/f2/111/129/...1AA942F4 .jpg
> that keeps timing out, then resetting when under heavy load. it's got 6
> 18G 10k rpm (Seagate i think) drives in it configured in a stripe and
> it's connected to an Adaptec 2940. OS is FreeBSD.

[ ... ]

> it seems to be heat related because after it hangs it will continue
> to hang every 10 seconds or so while data is still being dumped to or
> read from. if the process generating the IO is stopped for a while then
> restarted it will run for about 10 minutes before starting the cycle
> over again.
>
> has anyone else experienced any issues with this enclosure or have
> any ideas how to solve/get around the problem?

Does the fan work? (Can you feel air being blown out the back
when you turn it on?)

Is the box clogged with housedust? Ours tend to accumulate cat
hair and dust with a few years of continuous operation.

There are some software packages out there which will report the
temperature that at lest some of the drives sense.

Note that I am not running it as a stripe, but rather as
individual filesystems under Solaris 10, which may have some impact on
things.

Good Luck,
DoN.


--
Email: <dnichols@d-and-d.com> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
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--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

DoN. Nichols wrote:
<snip>
> Does the fan work? (Can you feel air being blown out the back
> when you turn it on?)

yes. both are pushing quite a bit of air

> Is the box clogged with housedust? Ours tend to accumulate cat
> hair and dust with a few years of continuous operation.

it's sitting in an open back "cubby hole" in my desk about 3 feet off
the ground so there wasn't much dust at all when i opened it up a couple
of days ago, but i blew it out anyway. i actually ended up leaving the
side pannel part way open and putting a fan in front. it works for
about 30 minutes this way and when it starts it's "cycle" it goes about
2 minutes before crapping out again.
cheesy top view ascii art follows:

____
/| |
/ | | <--drives
----

/-----\
\-----/ <--fan

> There are some software packages out there which will report the
> temperature that at lest some of the drives sense.

i didn't know that there were any drives that reported temp... any
pointers?

> Note that I am not running it as a stripe, but rather as
> individual filesystems under Solaris 10, which may have some impact on
> things.

the only difference i can think if is that these 18 gig drives are
double height 3.5" rather than the little 4 giggers that were in it. i
pulled them out of an AlphaServer 1200 that started having /issues/
(hince the other DEC enclosuer i have).
the way FreeBSD does the stripe is that one sector is on one drive the
next is on the next drive and so on before going back to the first one
so it spreads the load pretty evenly across all the drives and, therfore
reading/writing at the same time across the file system /should/ be more
efficient. this just adds to the confusion on 1 particular drive or
another causing the issue since any 1 disk is only getting 1/6 of the load.

--
- - james <at> hal-pc.org - -

Something is wrong with this country when a particular party
wants to make a BIG stink (no pun intended) about someone
putting panties on a prisoner's head when this is happening:
** WARNING ** gruesome.
http://www.mensnewsdaily.com/video/a...ng-murder2.wmv
Some people need to *think* about their priorities.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

According to james <at>:
> DoN. Nichols wrote:
> <snip>
> > Does the fan work? (Can you feel air being blown out the back
> > when you turn it on?)
>
> yes. both are pushing quite a bit of air
>
> > Is the box clogged with housedust? Ours tend to accumulate cat
> > hair and dust with a few years of continuous operation.
>
> it's sitting in an open back "cubby hole" in my desk about 3 feet off
> the ground so there wasn't much dust at all when i opened it up a couple
> of days ago, but i blew it out anyway.

O,K. So that is eliminated, assuming that the fans in the box
still run -- which your statement above suggests.

> i actually ended up leaving the
> side pannel part way open and putting a fan in front. it works for
> about 30 minutes this way and when it starts it's "cycle" it goes about
> 2 minutes before crapping out again.
> cheesy top view ascii art follows:
>
> ____
> /| |
> / | | <--drives
> ----
>
> /-----\
> \-----/ <--fan
>
> > There are some software packages out there which will report the
> > temperature that at lest some of the drives sense.
>
> i didn't know that there were any drives that reported temp... any
> pointers?

I've been trying to remember. IIRC, someone posted to this
newsgroup within the last year a fairly simple C program which reads that
information. And, I think that it may also report the temperature at
which it decides to shut down as well. I compiled it, and it worked
nicely, but I now forget its name. (One of the hazards of having
programs without man pages. :-)

One thing which is a major superset of that is:

smartmontools-5.33

which might be a good idea while running striped disks anyway.

> > Note that I am not running it as a stripe, but rather as
> > individual filesystems under Solaris 10, which may have some impact on
> > things.
>
> the only difference i can think if is that these 18 gig drives are
> double height 3.5" rather than the little 4 giggers that were in it. i
> pulled them out of an AlphaServer 1200 that started having /issues/
> (hince the other DEC enclosuer i have).

Hmm ... so you are using the 1" high spuds to mount the drives.
I have some which came with 9GB drives which include an extra barrier to
make the front the same height as the drives.

The numbers on an example of that style are:

0020772-9750C48359

and

5402951-02

The latter looks more like a Sun part number, but I'm not sure whether
it refers to the combination of the drive and the spud, or the spud
alone.

The former number is on the drive's label as well -- for a
Seagate ST19171WC.

Note that there is another multipack which looks just like what
you have, except that it has more LEDs on the front, and it can accept
twelve of the 1" high drives, instead of six of the 1.6" high drives.

I think that the drive should have a matching height spud, to
make the cooling better.

Note that I have had some 1" 18GB drives which would shut down
from heat in an Ultra-2, while the are quite happy in the 12-slot
Multipack.

> the way FreeBSD does the stripe is that one sector is on one drive the
> next is on the next drive and so on before going back to the first one
> so it spreads the load pretty evenly across all the drives and, therfore
> reading/writing at the same time across the file system /should/ be more
> efficient. this just adds to the confusion on 1 particular drive or
> another causing the issue since any 1 disk is only getting 1/6 of the load.

But -- it *may* translate to all six drives being run at full
speed, if the data transfer path (and the CPU) are fast enough to accept
all six drives worth of maximum throughput. In that case, there would
be more heat generated than with a single drive being run at maximum
throughput at a time.

I would be tempted to find six of the 1" 18GB drives to replace
your 1.6" ones. Start by replacing the one which overheats, as it may
simply have a lower overtemperature threshold. If necessary, replace
them all. The 1" disks typically run cooler than the 1.6" ones of
similar capacity.

Good Luck,
DoN.



--
Email: <dnichols@d-and-d.com> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
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--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

DoN. Nichols wrote:
<snip>
> I've been trying to remember. IIRC, someone posted to this
> newsgroup within the last year a fairly simple C program which reads that
> information. And, I think that it may also report the temperature at
> which it decides to shut down as well. I compiled it, and it worked
> nicely, but I now forget its name. (One of the hazards of having
> programs without man pages. :-)
>
> One thing which is a major superset of that is:
>
> smartmontools-5.33
>
> which might be a good idea while running striped disks anyway.

thanks. i'll check that out. it's even in FreeBSD's ports. i didn't
realize that SCSI drives also supported SMART. thought it was an IDE
only thing, but i see now that's not the case.

<snip>
> Note that there is another multipack which looks just like what
> you have, except that it has more LEDs on the front, and it can accept
> twelve of the 1" high drives, instead of six of the 1.6" high drives.

now /that/ would be nice

> I think that the drive should have a matching height spud, to
> make the cooling better.

i'm not sure if the spud would have much to do with heat problems. they
/are/ in the 1" spuds though, so who knows..

> But -- it *may* translate to all six drives being run at full
> speed, if the data transfer path (and the CPU) are fast enough to accept
> all six drives worth of maximum throughput. In that case, there would
> be more heat generated than with a single drive being run at maximum
> throughput at a time.

that's a good point. by "heavy load", i mean transfering files from
those drives to my file server and running multiple instances of IO
intensive apps (dvdauthor, avidemux, etc) that don't require much cpu.
i've started doing most of that on my Alpha in another room to cut down
on the load on my workstation because of the problems with these drives.

> I would be tempted to find six of the 1" 18GB drives to replace
> your 1.6" ones. Start by replacing the one which overheats, as it may
> simply have a lower overtemperature threshold. If necessary, replace
> them all. The 1" disks typically run cooler than the 1.6" ones of
> similar capacity.

in noticing more over the weekend i see that it tends to be id 1,2,and 3
that seem to fail most often (the ones in the back) but occasionaly
it'll be id 4 or 6 (i never saw it happen on 5). judging by the lights
on the front at least.. the ones that go out, i assume, are the ones
that have the issue at the moment...
new drives aren't exactly in my budget right now. i may end up taking
the ones out of the monsterous DEC enclosure and putting them in here
(PITA and silly design i might add having them totally enclosed in their
own individual drive bays). i really like this little Sun box because
of the small footprint, but if this doesn't work then i'll need to come
up with room for the big DEC..
thanks again for the advice. i appreciate it.

--
- - james <at> hal-pc.org - -

In every dictatorship, ownership of guns is outlawed.
A state treads carefully when the citizens are armed.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

According to james <at>:
> DoN. Nichols wrote:
> <snip>
> > I've been trying to remember. IIRC, someone posted to this
> > newsgroup within the last year a fairly simple C program which reads that
> > information. And, I think that it may also report the temperature at
> > which it decides to shut down as well. I compiled it, and it worked
> > nicely, but I now forget its name. (One of the hazards of having
> > programs without man pages. :-)
> >
> > One thing which is a major superset of that is:
> >
> > smartmontools-5.33
> >
> > which might be a good idea while running striped disks anyway.
>
> thanks. i'll check that out. it's even in FreeBSD's ports. i didn't
> realize that SCSI drives also supported SMART. thought it was an IDE
> only thing, but i see now that's not the case.

Of course, only some drives recognize it. It depends on just
how old your drives are.

> <snip>
> > Note that there is another multipack which looks just like what
> > you have, except that it has more LEDs on the front, and it can accept
> > twelve of the 1" high drives, instead of six of the 1.6" high drives.
>
> now /that/ would be nice

With one tradeoff. Only some of the 6-pack ones are Ultra
speed. They are so marked on the bottom front left corner, IIRC, and
*sometimes* also on the drive access door. Other 6-pack ones are
slower, and *all* of the 12-pack ones are slower, for whatever reason.

Note that while the 6-pack has a switch on the back to switch
between IP blocks, the 12-pack has has an interesting fixed pattern of
SCSI IDs:

0 & 1 are skipped, because they are in the ULTRA-1 and ULTRA-2 CPU
boxes.

3, 3, 4 & 5 are in the Multipack.

6 is in the CPU box (the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive)

7 is, of course the host adaptor's ID.

8, and 9 are the remainder of the back column of drives.

10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 are the front column of drives.

> > I think that the drive should have a matching height spud, to
> > make the cooling better.
>
> i'm not sure if the spud would have much to do with heat problems. they
> /are/ in the 1" spuds though, so who knows..

Exactly -- who knows.

Note that the D1000 and A1000 StorEdge boxes expect special
plates to be screwed to the bottom of the drives, with louvers which
direct cooling airflow to the components on the bottom of each drive.
Those are made with the assumption that the airflow is from front to
back (as it is in those enclosures), not from side to side, as it is in
the MultiPack enclosures.

Also -- be very careful not to put drives so equipped into the
bottom slots on a MultiPack housing, as it will catch on the RFI
flashing on the bottom of the doorway, and you will have great
difficulty getting the drive back out.

My A1000/D1000 (depends on which module is in the back) has the
twelve slots for the 1" drives, though some have six slots for the 1.6"
drives. That one rack mounts, and all the drives are front accessible.

> > But -- it *may* translate to all six drives being run at full
> > speed, if the data transfer path (and the CPU) are fast enough to accept
> > all six drives worth of maximum throughput. In that case, there would
> > be more heat generated than with a single drive being run at maximum
> > throughput at a time.
>
> that's a good point. by "heavy load", i mean transfering files from
> those drives to my file server and running multiple instances of IO
> intensive apps (dvdauthor, avidemux, etc) that don't require much cpu.

So -- if the SCSI bus is fast enough, it could mean running all
six drives at full tilt, and at least all that head seeking will
increase the power dissipation somewhat. I'm not sure whether the write
circuits represent enough additional power.

> i've started doing most of that on my Alpha in another room to cut down
> on the load on my workstation because of the problems with these drives.
>
> > I would be tempted to find six of the 1" 18GB drives to replace
> > your 1.6" ones. Start by replacing the one which overheats, as it may
> > simply have a lower overtemperature threshold. If necessary, replace
> > them all. The 1" disks typically run cooler than the 1.6" ones of
> > similar capacity.
>
> in noticing more over the weekend i see that it tends to be id 1,2,and 3
> that seem to fail most often (the ones in the back) but occasionaly
> it'll be id 4 or 6 (i never saw it happen on 5). judging by the lights
> on the front at least.. the ones that go out, i assume, are the ones
> that have the issue at the moment...

The back drives failing more often makes sense, since the
cooling air which reaches them has already passed over the front drives.
(BTW -- when you blew out the dust -- did you include the grilles in the
front of the housing? That is where the air flows in.

BTW -- what is the power rating on the drives you have in there?
Looking at the 1.6" Fujitsu 9GB drives which came in my 6-slot Multipack
I only see a listing of the voltages needed (+5V and +12V) with no clue
as to the current needed, so I can't tell you how much power they
consume for comparison. (Well ... maybe it is in the FEH, but it is too
late for me to dig that out tonight.

> new drives aren't exactly in my budget right now. i may end up taking
> the ones out of the monsterous DEC enclosure and putting them in here
> (PITA and silly design i might add having them totally enclosed in their
> own individual drive bays). i really like this little Sun box because
> of the small footprint, but if this doesn't work then i'll need to come
> up with room for the big DEC..

Will the DEC housing hold the other drives which you will be
pulling from the Multipack? If so, this might be a good way to go, as
the DEC housing may well have better cooling airflow.

> thanks again for the advice. i appreciate it.

I hope that you get it all straightened out.

Good Luck,
DoN.

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--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

DoN. Nichols wrote:
<snip>
>>> smartmontools-5.33
>>>
>>>which might be a good idea while running striped disks anyway.
>>
>>thanks. i'll check that out. it's even in FreeBSD's ports. i didn't
>>realize that SCSI drives also supported SMART. thought it was an IDE
>>only thing, but i see now that's not the case.
>
>
> Of course, only some drives recognize it. It depends on just
> how old your drives are.

ok.. now this is odd. i got it installed and, supprising enough, got
some readings. all have a shutdown temp of 65c and the front drives
range from 42-44c while the back range from 49-51c. none ever got above
51 at any time when it was shutting down on me. may be over heating
components rather than the drive shutting itself down. i also notice
that most of the drives showed a "powered on" time of around 200k hours
while the top and bottom drives in the back showed 15-17k hours... i'm
assuming that's the amount of time the box has been on rather than
runtime of the life of the drive?

<snip>
> Also -- be very careful not to put drives so equipped into the
> bottom slots on a MultiPack housing, as it will catch on the RFI
> flashing on the bottom of the doorway, and you will have great
> difficulty getting the drive back out.

no such attachments on them.

<snip>
> BTW -- what is the power rating on the drives you have in there?

noticing the "powered on" time discrepency i'm lead to believe that
maybe the Multipack's power supply may be the issue. not able to handle
the load?

<snip>
> Will the DEC housing hold the other drives which you will be
> pulling from the Multipack? If so, this might be a good way to go, as
> the DEC housing may well have better cooling airflow.

the drives i'm using in the Multipack are from an Alpha that has the
same setup as the DEC enclosure. the drives are actually interchangable
between my other running AlphaServer 1200 and the enclosure.
the DEC has 2 "squirrel cage" fans in the back that are about 6" in
diameter. made for volume rather than speed... i'll have to do a
little more tinkering to figure this out.
thanks again. i'll let you know if the same drives work in the DEC. if
so then i'll just put the Multipack back on my Ultra 10. btw, know of a
software stripe solution (free) for Solaris 10?

--
- - james <at> hal-pc.org - -

"During my service in the United States Congress,
I took the initave in creating the Internet" -Al Gore
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"james <at> hal-pc.org" wrote:
> btw, know of a
> software stripe solution (free) for Solaris 10?
>

Although I have not used it, Solaris Volume manager is part of Solaris 10.

sparrow /export/home/drkirkby % man metaimport

System Administration Commands metaimport(1M)

NAME
metaimport - imports disk sets into existing Solaris Volume
Manager configurations
<snip>
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:

__________________________________________________ __________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|___________________ __________|
| Availability | SUNWmdu |
|_____________________________|___________________ __________|
| Stability | Stable |
|_____________________________|___________________ __________|

SEE ALSO
mdmonitord(1M), metaclear(1M), metadb(1M), metadetach(1M),
metahs(1M), metainit(1M), metaoffline(1M), metaonline(1M),
metaparam(1M), metarecover(1M), metareplace(1M),
metaroot(1M), metaset(1M), metasync(1M), metattach(1M),
md.tab(4), md.cf(4), mddb.cf(4), attributes(5)

Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide

SunOS 5.10 Last change: 24 Jul 2004 3


--
Dave K

Minefield Consultant and Solitaire Expert (MCSE).

Please note my email address changes periodically to avoid spam.
It is always of the form: month-year@domain. Hitting reply will work
for a couple of months only. Later set it manually.

According to james <at>:
> DoN. Nichols wrote:
> <snip>
> >>> smartmontools-5.33

[ ... ]

> > Of course, only some drives recognize it. It depends on just
> > how old your drives are.
>
> ok.. now this is odd. i got it installed and, supprising enough, got
> some readings. all have a shutdown temp of 65c and the front drives
> range from 42-44c while the back range from 49-51c. none ever got above
> 51 at any time when it was shutting down on me. may be over heating
> components rather than the drive shutting itself down. i also notice
> that most of the drives showed a "powered on" time of around 200k hours
> while the top and bottom drives in the back showed 15-17k hours... i'm
> assuming that's the amount of time the box has been on rather than
> runtime of the life of the drive?

Hmm ... that is on the order of two years steady on time. Has
the box really been on that long? And the 200K hours works out to 22.82
years. That does not sound even remotely possible, even if it is the
sum of all powered on time since they were manufactured.

Is it possible that you have been getting power glitches which
may have corrupted the NVRAM in the drives?

> <snip>
> > Also -- be very careful not to put drives so equipped into the
> > bottom slots on a MultiPack housing, as it will catch on the RFI
> > flashing on the bottom of the doorway, and you will have great
> > difficulty getting the drive back out.
>
> no such attachments on them.

Good. They would be a big help with the A1000/D1000 enclosure,
but a big problem with the Multipack.

> <snip>
> > BTW -- what is the power rating on the drives you have in there?
>
> noticing the "powered on" time discrepency i'm lead to believe that
> maybe the Multipack's power supply may be the issue. not able to handle
> the load?

That -- or poor connections on the power connector to the
backplane, or to the individual drives.

Back in the days when I was using AT&T UnixPC (7300/3B1)
machines (68010 CPUs), one of the failure modes was overheating of the
connector from the power supply to the motherboard. It was a fairly
stiff ribbon cable, with an IDC single-row connector from the
motherboard which plugged onto a row of pins sticking up from the power
supply. The 7300 version had the power for the disk drive (all of 20
MB) running through this cable and connector. The 3B1, which had up to
a 67 MB drive, had a separate cable directly from the power supply to
the drive.

When the system got old, the pins on the connector would
oxidize, and start to overheat. Depending on which pin it was, it could
glitch memory, the disk controller, or the CPU itself. And at least
once, the heat on the pin melted back the solder connecting that pin to
the traces on the CPU board, leaving it arcing and seriously glitching
things.

At the time, the best cure was a contact treatment called
"Cramolin", which has since been replaced by "DeOxIt" from the same
company, as the original Cramolin apparently fell afoul of the anti-CFC
rules which make Freon so hard to get these days. You would spray both
connectors, mate and un-mate one several times to break down the oxide
film, wipe off what you could access, and then re-spray with a new
treatment of Cramolin before reassembling. (They supplied two colors,
red and blue, with the one being for the first treatment, and the other
for the final assembly. In reality, they differed only in the color
additives, but this was their way of making sure that you gave two
applications with a wipe-off between. :-)

You might check the connector from the power supply to the
backplane on your Multipack to see if the pins show any signs of
overheating. If so, some similar high-grade contact treatment might
help, or you might do well to pick up a spare Multipack and swap the
drive into it.

While you have the box apart, spraying the 80-pin connectors
into which the drives plug will probably not hurt.

Be careful when you disassemble and reassemble the Multipack
housing to not lose the clear plastic moulded piece which goes over the
activity LEDs to pipe the light out the front of the box.

> <snip>
> > Will the DEC housing hold the other drives which you will be
> > pulling from the Multipack? If so, this might be a good way to go, as
> > the DEC housing may well have better cooling airflow.
>
> the drives i'm using in the Multipack are from an Alpha that has the
> same setup as the DEC enclosure. the drives are actually interchangable
> between my other running AlphaServer 1200 and the enclosure.
> the DEC has 2 "squirrel cage" fans in the back that are about 6" in
> diameter. made for volume rather than speed... i'll have to do a
> little more tinkering to figure this out.

O.K. I suspect problems with the power supply in the Multipack,
and the easiest fix is to pick up a used one from eBay as a replacement.

> thanks again. i'll let you know if the same drives work in the DEC. if
> so then i'll just put the Multipack back on my Ultra 10. btw, know of a
> software stripe solution (free) for Solaris 10?

Start with "man metainit". That will point you to a bunch of
other commands (in the "SEE ALSO" section):

================================================== ====================
SEE ALSO
mdmonitord(1M), metaclear(1M), metadb(1M), metadetach(1M),
metahs(1M), metaoffline(1M), metaonline(1M), metaparam(1M),
metarecover(1M), metarename(1M), metareplace(1M),
metaroot(1M), metaset(1M), metassist(1M), metastat(1M),
metasync(1M), metattach(1M), md.tab(4), md.cf(4),
mddb.cf(4), md.tab(4), attributes(5), md(7D)

Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide
================================================== ====================

It is amazing the number of things which are buried in Solaris
10 which are not obvious until someone else stumbles across them and
points them out to you. :-)

Good luck,
DoN.
--
Email: <dnichols@d-and-d.com> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
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--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

DoN. Nichols wrote:
<snip>
> Hmm ... that is on the order of two years steady on time. Has
> the box really been on that long? And the 200K hours works out to 22.82
> years. That does not sound even remotely possible, even if it is the
> sum of all powered on time since they were manufactured.
>
> Is it possible that you have been getting power glitches which
> may have corrupted the NVRAM in the drives?

i'd have to check the uptime on my file server, but it's been on for
a little less than a year. last time it was out was when we lost power
long enough for my UPSs to die. June maybe. quite odd indeed.

<snip>
> company, as the original Cramolin apparently fell afoul of the anti-CFC
> rules which make Freon so hard to get these days. You would spray both
<snip>

i'm guessing you're in Florida?
quite too far away, but you can get Freon in Mexico dirt cheap. funny
how the tree-huggers in the US make such a big stink (no put intended)
about polution here but never say anything about what goes on right
across the river.

> Start with "man metainit". That will point you to a bunch of
> other commands (in the "SEE ALSO" section):

thanks to you and Dave for pointing this out.

> It is amazing the number of things which are buried in Solaris
> 10 which are not obvious until someone else stumbles across them and
> points them out to you. :-)

no kidding. i've been messing with UN*X for about 8 years now and i
still stumble upon something i didn't know you could do.

thanks again.

--
- - james <at> hal-pc.org - -

Freedom defined is freedom denied.
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