Meridian Mail not recording

[DTDude]

Meridian Mail 12.4 on an Option 11 version 25.08. I can’t get it to record anything. Created a new mailbox and tried to record the personal verification. Nothing. Try to leave a message. It insists nothing was recorded. Otherwise the system seems fine. It’s responsive to phone calls and from the terminal. All ports and DSP’s show as in service. Hard drive passes diagnostics.

I checked the SEER log. It shows several DSP timing slips, but they seem to have stopped after a reboot. Still can’t record anything.

I’ve tried from multiple extensions, all of which are transmitting voice just fine.

Any ideas short of a faulty mermail card?

 

[Firebird Scrambler]

Have you been into the maintenance area to check the amount of storage left on the hard disk as this problem has happened to me and it all started when the hard disk was full as there was no where to record any messages.

The solution was to go through all the mailboxes and do a search to look for any mailboxes that were disabled or had not been used for a long time with large storage allocated to them.

Usually to can find when the mailbox was last used, but some mailboxes can be attached to hunt groups or ACD queues etc and this could lead you onto a path of finding out that certain mailboxes were never answering their messages left which is a little worrying.

Anyway, go through all of them and this should start to free up disk space. Whilst in there it's a good idea to give as many mailboxes a COS (Class Of Service) instead of a personal mailbox as you can set up a storage space and also the most important one (in my opinion) the read message deletion time as it's defaulted to "0" and setting this to e.g. 7 means that any read message will be automatically deleted after the number of days specified.

This is all really a case of giving your system a housekeeping check over.

Firebird Scrambler

Nortel & Avaya Meridian 1 / Succession & BCM / Norstar Programmer

Website =

http://somertel.com

linkedin

 

[DTDude]

Unfortunately, I had already done this. Most mailboxes were already deleted, only 2 total right now. Disk space is 28% used. And to clarify, it’s not saying it can’t record, it’s just not recording. I’ll get the beep to record, press # and it will tell me that no message was recorded. Almost like I was muted.

But, I am leaning towards hardware now. I noticed some of the ACD agents were logged out. While troubleshooting the card ended up in a state where the AML is up but shows LY2 enabled and LY7 disabled. I tried to disable aml 9 and them do an enl aml 9 amcs in LD 48. I get an LNK217 error. I tried to courtesy down the system and then reboot the entire switch. It got stuck in CourtesyDown Pending. Went ahead and turned the switch off and back on. Meridian Mail did not boot back up. The drive spins but no action at all. No drive activity. AML stuck on an auto setup status. Does not respond to an AX command. Nothing.

 

[Firebird Scrambler]

When was the last time you did a backup?. Have you got a SCSI tape drive for your Option 11 system?. Do you have the keycodes and installation tape?.

From experience, it would appear that the hard disk has failed.
Assuming that you have no backup, then all you can do is to pull the card in slot 10. Remove the hard disk and see if you can source a replacement.

You might be lucky if the problem is on the power unit or Motherboard where the disk is.

There should be no need to kill the phone system, but remember to disable the AML prior to pulling out the mail card.

Whenever I had Layer problems such as yours, I used to use the "KILL" command to reset the mail system. I would go into LD 48 and use something like DIS AML 9 straight after the KILL command and wait a few minutes.

I would then use the command in LD 48 of ENL AML 9 ACMS to force it to start up and switch to the mail program by doing "ctrl ]" to watch it boot up. I recall that Mail 12 took a while before it finally booted up.

Firebird Scrambler

Nortel & Avaya Meridian 1 / Succession & BCM / Norstar Programmer

Website =

http://somertel.com

linkedin

 

[KCFLHRC]

Just FYI, if the SCSI terminator or tape drive is not connected it very well may not boot into service.

 

[DTDude]

I’m going to pull the card and reseat everything and cross my fingers.

I do have the key code, but I do not have the tape or tape drive. I’ve found sources for the tape, but having a really hard time finding any of the recommended tape drives.

 

[Firebird Scrambler]

All I have is some old records / reports below.

Mail - Tandberg 2.5GB Tape Drive
This tape drive is shipped as standard with all new Mail 10 ECs.
It is backwards compatible to Mail 8 for Classic and Card Options

The drive offers an increase in storage capacity per tape from 250M to 2.5Gb. This leads to a 10 fold reduction in the number of tapes required for backups.

There is a LED indicator on the front of the unit

OFF= No Cartridge in Drive
STEADY GREEN = Cartridge is inserted.
BLINKING GREEN= Tape Drive Motor is in Operation
STEADY AMBER= Media Error
Media Error - The amber light turns off as the cartridge is removed
Hardware Error - The amber light stays on until the SCSI bus is reset. Normally

##############################################

MAIL SYSTEM WILL NOT BOOT/WRITE TO DISK ON NEW INSTALL.
Lots of different version have of strapping have been suggested in the past. After much testing by Nortel the only supported arrangements are

17 and 18 19 and 20

All other straps should be removed.

It is important to note that if a External Tape Drive is being used the Bus Terminating plug must be fitted onto the Tape Streamer.

#############################################

There have been a number of issues encountered by engineers involved in Meridian Mail installations and Back ups, when using a Dacon Tape Drive. The description of the problem varies from, Not being able to perform a Mail back up to actually blowing the Mail cards and wiping the Hard drive. If in any doubt about which cable you have, DO NOT USE until it has been verified with Dacon

These difficulties have so far only been encountered when the Meridian Mail is fitted with a Seagate 51080 Hard Drive.
It has been noted that if the cable supplied with the Dacon Tape drive, SCSI-1102-0600,
is substituted with a cable supplied by Nortel , NTAK1305 (A0372864), then the Tape drives become usable.

Solution
The faulty Dacon cables are 3 metres in length, anyone having a suspect cable, should ring the Dacon Helpdesk on 01442 275200, and arrange for a replacement cable to be sent FOC.

The replacement cables are 2 meters in length and can be identified by a coloured band around one end. These cables have been used successfully in the field, by performing an upgrade, install and back ups




Firebird Scrambler

Nortel & Avaya Meridian 1 / Succession & BCM / Norstar Programmer

Website =

http://somertel.com

linkedin

 

[DTDude]

She lives! Sort of.

I pulled the card, reseated the hard drive cable and the daughterboard. I also discovered that at some point the heat sync had fallen off of the Motorola processor, and someone had stuck in on the back of the board on the solder points. There are some metallic elements on that back of the heat sync...this could have simply been a short. Re-seated the card and in a few minutes it booted right back up and the AML came on line on its own. Dialed 7000 and heard the familiar "Meridian Mail. Mailbox?" It's also recording now too.

There are still a couple wonky things though. The first is that MWI lights are not coming on. The second issue is that some ACD agents still show as offline. I'm not sure this is an issue though. The MerMail system has 6 ports, all of which show as in-service. There are more ACD agents than ports. The TN of those ports in service match the TN of the ACD agents logged in:

Limit; MaxVoice MinMulti; MaxFull; ---------Allocated---------
6 6 0 6 M/F: 0 V/F: 6 V/B: 0

# C-D-P TN ACD DN SCN Type Capability Outbound
1 3-1-1 10-04 7000 7808 Voice Full Basic ALL
2 3-1-2 10-12 7000 7809 Voice Full Basic ALL
3 3-2-1 10-05 7000 7810 Voice Full Basic ALL
4 3-2-2 10-13 7000 7811 Voice Full Basic ALL
5 4-1-1 10-00 7000 7800 Voice Full Basic ALL
6 4-1-2 10-08 7000 7801 Voice Full Basic ALL

d 32
NPR000
.stat 10
00 = UNIT 00 = IDLE (BCS LOG IN )
01 = UNIT 01 = IDLE (BCS MSB LOG OUT)
02 = UNIT 02 = IDLE (BCS MSB LOG OUT)
03 = UNIT 03 = IDLE (BCS MSB LOG OUT)
04 = UNIT 04 = IDLE (BCS LOG IN )
05 = UNIT 05 = IDLE (BCS LOG IN )
06 = UNIT 06 = UNEQ
07 = UNIT 07 = UNEQ
08 = UNIT 08 = IDLE (BCS LOG IN )
09 = UNIT 09 = IDLE (BCS MSB LOG OUT)
10 = UNIT 10 = IDLE (BCS MSB LOG OUT)
11 = UNIT 11 = IDLE (BCS MSB LOG OUT)
12 = UNIT 12 = IDLE (BCS LOG IN )
13 = UNIT 13 = IDLE (BCS LOG IN )
14 = UNIT 14 = UNEQ
15 = UNIT 15 = UNEQ
16 = UNIT 16 = UNEQ
17 = UNIT 17 = UNEQ
18 = UNIT 18 = UNEQ
19 = UNIT 19 = UNEQ
20 = UNIT 20 = UNEQ
21 = UNIT 21 = UNEQ
22 = UNIT 22 = UNEQ
23 = UNIT 23 = UNEQ
24 = UNIT 24 = UNEQ
25 = UNIT 25 = UNEQ
26 = UNIT 26 = UNEQ
27 = UNIT 27 = UNEQ
28 = UNIT 28 = UNEQ
29 = UNIT 29 = UNEQ
30 = UNIT 30 = UNEQ
31 = UNIT 31 = UNEQ

 

[DTDude]

I had MWD in CLS. Changed to MWA. All is good now.

Thanks everyone!