Meridian Mail won't come up...

[MacMan11]

I have an Option 11 which as a result of power outage can no longer get to Meridian Mail. When I login to the PBX I get a stream of CSA001 9, date, 4 messages. This implies CSL 9 can't be brought up due to ESDI problem. I assume ESDI refers to Enhanced Serial Data interface. The system has amongst line and trunk cards an NTAK03 TDS/DTR card. Is this card used for ESDI to get to the mail? If not what is, the backplane? When I do an LD 37 and STAT I Get
TTY 0 : ENBL TTY 1 : ENBL TTY 2 : ENBL
TTY 8 : DSBL TTY 9 : DSBL
Where are TTY 8 and 9? On the Mail cards? And what is TTY 8 used for? So many questions.. Basically any attempts I make to get Mail going come down to ESDI 9 being the problem and I am just trying to determine which card to replace or reconfig in some way if it is not hardware, which would be a nice bonus. By the way the Mail LED comes up green if that is worth anything. I have also reseated cards. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Crowd36]

TTY 8 is the Low Speed Link which is the TTY you use to do Mail admin. It is on the backplane. In LD 37 try "ENL TTY 8". The AML link (Mail sig link) is brought up in LD 48 using "ENL AML 9 ACMS".

 

[MacMan11]

Thanks for the info. When I do ENL TTY 8 or 9 in LD 37 I get IOD030 which says command not available for ESDI port.
When I do ENL AML 9 ACMS in LD 48 I get LNK012 which is ACD-D not equipped. We only have the BACD and ACDA packages. If thses keeps up I may have no hair left. Again, any advice etc would be deeply appreciated.

 

[techman3030]

In LD 48 do a
stat aml
post what it says, please.
You haven't added any keycodes or installed any patches lately have you?

 

[MacMan11]

Nothing was patched or keycodes added. The mail problem started after a power down and restart. STAT AML in LD 48 also produces LNK012. We are only at Rlse 16 if that is significant. Out of curiousity what determines what is an ESDI port? It seems strange to get TTY 8 and 9 DSBL. Are you saying that TTY 8 is the link for Mail maintenance and 9 is the link for normal mail processing? As before thanks for your assistance.

 

[luv2ski]

call your vendor

Pat Guido
NEXTIRAONE
Pat.guido@nextiraone.com

Formerly Nextira, formerly Williams Communications, formerly Wiltel, formerly Nortel networks, formerly Northern Telecom, formerly, Nynex meridian systems formerly Northern Telecom.

 

[MacMan11]

With all due respect, this is hardly of any assistance and not worth the effort to post. As you are a vendor I can understand though.

 

[techman3030]

OK. rls 17 and prior. you have csl commands instead of aml.
ld 48
acms x

x is the link you want to do auto setup on. in your case 9
then type
enl esdi 9
enl cms 9

you also should be able to
stat esdi 9
stat cms 9

 

[MacMan11]

techman3030..Thanks for your assistance.
I have tried these before.
When I do an ACMS 9 I get the CSA001 9,date,4 message.
When I do ENL CMS 9 I get LNK 063 9 (ESDI needs to be connected)and when I do STAT CMS 9 it shows as down. A STAT ESDI 9 shows as disabled with SYNC CMS in brackets.
Is it possible that there is something in the CFN? I have looked at it and as far as I can tell it seems reasonable. On a power outage where is the CFN data stored? Is it reloaded?

 

[StoneColdphoneman]

RLS 17 that is not supported by Nortel or any one time to upgrade.

 

[iamthephoneguy]

Try ENL AML 9 LYR2, this may work, or may not, maybe I can dig thru some old documents, as I think I have had this problem.

 

[techman3030]

In ld 48 do a
dis cms 9 (disable csl 9)
dis esdi 9 (disable esdi 9)
dsc esdi 9 (disconnect esdi link)
I know these probably say they are disabled already

slft esdi 9 (a self test for your esdi)
the esdi port must come up first
if it passes do a
enl esdi 9
IF it enables do a
con esdi 9 (sets up the link layer on the synchronus port)
then if that connects do a
enl cms 9
This should be the correct order to bring this up if there are no other problems. I know this is frustrating, but we'll try to get you through it. my friend had a rls 17 with basically the same problems. sometimes when all else failed he had to do a sysload. he has since upgraded. I DO NOT recommend this myself because you are on an old rls and like someone else said the older software rls aren't covered anymore. If you do try this MAKE SURE to do a datadump first.

 

[MacMan11]

techman3030 once again thanks for your interest. I appreciate it.

dis cms 9 and
dis esdi 9 both seem to work. At least no message.
dsc esdi 9 however produces LNK055 which I think is okay since esdi 9 is not connected to start with.

Now slft esdi 9 produces LNK059 which is ports not in idle state. I am curious if anyone knows what determines whether the port is idle.

Here are some other pieces of info because they may shed some light. If I do an AX I get the AUX> at first then a LNK060 8 message and nothing. I have to escape back to the switch then.

Also in case there is something here I have provided the CFN for TTY 8 and TTY 9.

ADAN TTY 8
CDNO 10
PORT 0
SYNC NO
DUPX FULL
BPS 1200
BITL 8
STOP 1
PRTY NONE
FLOW NONE
ENL YES
USER LSL
XSM NO

ADAN TTY 9
CDNO 10
PORT 1
SYNC YES
DUPX FULL
BPS 4800
CLOK EXT
IADR 003
RADR 001
T1 10
T2 002
T3 040
N1 128
N2 08
K 7
RXMT 05
CRC 10
ORUR 005
ABOR 005
ENL YES
USER CMS
XSM NO

 

[techman3030]

I am sorry. The lnk055 came up because the esdi link was not enabled so of course you can't break the link because it isn't made. every thing looks good on your ADAN. tty 8 is your maint. access port for the switch. it will be disabled in ld 37 until you type ax. tty 9 is your esdi port which seems to be where your trouble is. It looks like that the esdi port hung up during the bootup after the power failure, and nothing we are doing seems to reset it. sometimes they get something hung up in them and will not easily let go. I would try a soft reset (ini). I know I cautioned against this before, but it seems like it's just hung up and won't turn loose. I have done this during hang ups before and the only reason that I sugest caution to you is because the age of your system and the possibilities of any switch regardless of age failing to come back up after a reset. If that scares you, I know of a vendor where I have friends working that ini their switches 2 times a year to keep them running smoothly. It all depends on how you were taught to work on these switches. I myself am almost fearless about having to ini a switch of mine because I keep fairly decent backups at all my sites, but without backups I always suggest that if you have a contract with a vendor let them do it and if it breaks then you have someone to point the finger at. Ha Ha. I hope I have helped out in some small way. let me know what you decide.

 

[FredtheFoneGuy]

Do you have an external tape drive for your mail system? If so you should shut it down and INI the pbx. While the PBX recovers from INI power on the external tape drive and the links should establish. I have had this happen with power outages where the pbx recovers first, then the tape drive powers on. When this has happened I did the above INI/power cycle and all worked beautifully. Good luck!

 

[MacMan11]

Thanks techman3030 and thefoneguy. Is INI just the soft reset button on the CPU? If so I have tried that without success. Out of curiousity if I power down or ini the switch with the Mail powered down does that provide a chance of the ESDI not being fired up so I can do it manually. Finally I noticed in the LD 17 manual info that there is an ESDI YES/NO item when changing or creating an ADAN. Since I see no reference to ESDI in the ADAN for TTY 9 is that something I should try to CHG or does it only apply to an NTAK02 SDI card (which I don't have)? Since TTY 9 has USER CMS and LD 37 says for CMS the port must by synch ESDI I am hoping that forcing ESDI in the CFN for TTY 9 might trigger something. Also any thought on removing the TTY 9 and re-adding as an alternative approach? Last questions for now - if I change the CFN do I need to init the PBX? and where is the CFN data stored? - i.e. is it not backed up on the LD 43 overnight. Or is there some other way to back that up. By the way I am self-taught at this (for the little I know so far). And despite my frustration I am enjoying the pursuit of this! It's just not being 100% about a hardware problem vs. software problem that causes me to lose more of what little hair I have left.

 

[MacMan11]

Okay I have done some more digging. When I power up the switch with the meridian mail powered down I still get errors CSA 9, date, 4 as well as LNK060 8. When I powered up the Mail I eventually got INI002 0089 0088
which as I understand the HEX message implies the serial data i/f is gonzo. Thus I guess it is a hardware problem. Now is the SDI on the CPU board or could it be on the NTAK03 TDS/DTR board? I would prefer to only buy one board for the time being as I am looking to upgrade in the near future but would like to have mail going again. Thanks for all your help techman3030. If you are ever in the Niagara Falls area I have some cold beer and hot pizza waiting for you.

 

[techman3030]

I just so happen to love cold beer and pizza, and I appreciate the offer. If I'm ever up that way I'll look you up. with the mail powered down, the lnk 60 is normal. it just means that it can't talk to the esdi device or it is unplugged. you already know from your previous posts that the csa message means that the esdi port failed it's tests and is disabled. In a card option mail the ports are actually built to the mail card and everything goes through the backplane. On your ADAN the cdno is 10 which is where your mail card is. sometimes during an unexpected reboot your mail link to the controller card will hang. I've seen it all the way up to rls 25's. It's a little glitch that it seems nortel has never been able to clear up. most times you can disable the aml or in your case csl link, set it to acms (auto setup on reboot)and reboot the mail and it will set it's self back up. unfortunately yours really seems to be locked up. The only thing else I could think of doing would be a data dump then a cold restart (sysload), or powering down the switch for 5 min. or so. if something is not damaged it might well give it the time it needs to release it's hold on the link and reset it. the phoneguy had a good point about the tape drive. I've never seen one mess up the esdi link before, but I have seen then lock up the mail on restart before. again good luck and let us know what you decide.

 

[MacMan11]

There is no tape drive attached to the switch when we inherited it. I will get one as obviously at some point I will need one. Now one thing still bothers me. Since the ports in the mail go through the backplane they must go to a serial chip/controller somewhere and that must be in either the CPU board or the NTAK03, no? In which case it still might be hardware? By the way fredthefoneguy said INI/power cycle. What precisely does that mean? Also on power up does it matter if Mail is powered up or is it better to power it up after the rest of the switch is up?

 

[techman3030]

Yes the card option mail connects to the cpu card like the other cards via the backplane, so you could have a hardware problem with the cpu card, the backplane, or the mail card. I think he meant after the ini then power cycle on the tape drive to give the mail time to boot up first.
You should power up the mail with the switch so that both sides can connect to each other during the power up cycle.