StarWind Software

Hi,

I have StarWind 3.2.1 build 20061130 running on Windows 2003 (x64). I am trying to connect a Solaris 9 machine to an image file device. As you already know (I found a similar posting here but for RAM device), Solaris doesn't recognize the drive type, so I cannot format it under Solaris. Format displays the drive as "unknown drive type", auto configure failes. My only option is to specify cylinders, heads, clusters etc.

My question here - what is the drive geometry if my image drive file size is 980000 MB (that's what the properties of the imagefile shows). Here is what "Device Properties" show in the StarWind management console:

Device: ImageFile5
Image file name: My Computer\G\VOB\VOBLun7.img
Size: 980000 MB
Asynchronous: Yes
Readonly: No
Clustered: No

Thanks in advance

Alex

Hi,

ImageFile uses the following hardcoded values:
- Sector size = 512
- Sectors per Track = 16
- Tracks per Cylinder = 32

Thanks Valery,

It is stil unclear, how many cylinders I would have. When StarWind management console reports 980000MB - is this in 1000 or 1024 units. So my question is - how many cylinders I would have in order to manualy set the drive type?

Alex

alexstoev wrote:Thanks Valery,

It is stil unclear, how many cylinders I would have. When StarWind management console reports 980000MB - is this in 1000 or 1024 units. So my question is - how many cylinders I would have in order to manualy set the drive type?

Alex

1 Cylinder = 512 * 16 * 32 = 256 KB (262144 bytes)

StarWind use 1MB = 1024 KB = 1024*1024 bytes

So your Cylinders = 980000MB / 256KB = 980000 * 4 = 3920000

I hope this helps.

Thanks Valery,

Using these numbers I cannot write the label on the disk. Is this something that you guys are aware of - a problem with Solaris 9? I'm getting:
error writing VTOC
no backup labels
label failed

I had to modify format.dat file to include the drive geometry because format - other - doesn't accept the numbers for the cylinders. It replys with "3920000 is out of range".

Is there anuything else I need to know or modify?

Alex

alexstoev wrote:Thanks Valery,

Using these numbers I cannot write the label on the disk. Is this something that you guys are aware of - a problem with Solaris 9? I'm getting:
error writing VTOC
no backup labels
label failed

I had to modify format.dat file to include the drive geometry because format - other - doesn't accept the numbers for the cylinders. It replys with "3920000 is out of range".

Is there anuything else I need to know or modify?

Alex

Alex,

please send an Ethereal log file for a network exchange between StarWind and the Solaris 9 initiator.
Also please send the corresponding StarWind service's log file (from StarWind\logs directory).

Analyzing thease files should let us understand what is the problem with this configuration.

Thank you.

Valery,

The reason for the label failures is becasue I overwrote the max number of cylinders by using format.dat file. That trick did not work. Solaris 9 is limited to 65535 number of cylinders and will not take anything higher.

Is there any way I can modify the hardcoded numbers for sectors per track and tracks per cylinder?

The reason I'm asking is because of these settings and the Solaris 9 limit of 65535 maximum number of cylinders, I am limited to using drives that are up to 17GB.

Thanks in advance
Alex

What about upgrading to the Solaris 10?

alexstoev wrote:Valery,

The reason for the label failures is becasue I overwrote the max number of cylinders by using format.dat file. That trick did not work. Solaris 9 is limited to 65535 number of cylinders and will not take anything higher.

Is there any way I can modify the hardcoded numbers for sectors per track and tracks per cylinder?

The reason I'm asking is because of these settings and the Solaris 9 limit of 65535 maximum number of cylinders, I am limited to using drives that are up to 17GB.

Thanks in advance
Alex

alexstoev wrote:Valery,

The reason for the label failures is becasue I overwrote the max number of cylinders by using format.dat file. That trick did not work. Solaris 9 is limited to 65535 number of cylinders and will not take anything higher.

Is there any way I can modify the hardcoded numbers for sectors per track and tracks per cylinder?

The reason I'm asking is because of these settings and the Solaris 9 limit of 65535 maximum number of cylinders, I am limited to using drives that are up to 17GB.

Thanks in advance
Alex

Hi Alex,

1) There is no way to change the CHS values for ImageFiles.
But ever with 63 sectors per track and 255 tracks per cylinder your 980000MB image disk will have 124932 cylinders.

2) StarWind since v3.2.3 includes DiskBridge plugin that is able to map whole hard drives with full SCSI-3 emulation, so ever ATA devices can be used by SCSI-aware client systems.
In this mode the oricinal disk's CHS is reported to the initiator. So it could help to solve the problem.

Anton and Valery,
Thanks for the reply.

Soalris 10 has the same limits as 9 - up to 65535 cylinders (you know the good old 16 bit limits, even though the operating system is 64 bit).

At the moment I'm running 3.2.1. On your web site there is 3.2.2 Is 3.2.3 oficially available and how do I get it? Would this DiskBridge work with Solaris? I have no problem braking down the image file to smaller files but only a few. Cause otherwise I have to create 58 LUNs of 17GB each in order to build a volume 980GB.

Thanks in advance
Alex

Alex,

I sent a link to the recent StarWind RC to your email.

Please let us know whether it helps to solve the issue.

Valery,
Sorry for the late reply.

Thank you very much for the fast response.

Here is the summary and the solution - it may help some other people:

If you are running Solaris (the version doesn't matter), you must use DiskBridge plugin available in the latest release. This is necessary because Solaris has 16 bit limit for the number of cylinders. ImageFiles or even other types have hardcoded numbers for the sector size=512, sector per track=16, and tracks per cylinder 32. Because of these numbers the largest disk you can have is 17GB (65535 cylinders). If you need larger disk your solution is called DiskBridge. It works I tried it.

Thank you RocketDivision (especially Valery and Anton)

Alex,

Thank you for sharing the work around for Solaris 9 with the community!

We are planning to add some means to change disk geometry for the plug-ins in one of the next StarWind releases.