MERMAIL & OP11C PROBLEMS

[SYQUEST]

A company has an OP11c w/ ver. 24.24 and MerMail Card Option NT6R16AA w/ ver. 12.14 installed. The problem has been going on for some time. It will run fine for about 10 days. Then the MerMail stops communicating, no ans on AA or VM. The only way to get it back was to power cycle the switch. When it starts loading before the INI there are two errors:

PCH 0202: WARNING: Patch retention at diskOs level failed. Some or all diskOs patches may not have been retained.
BUG7462 OS 0: WARNING "Patch Init" failed.

Then the INI starts and loads, the switch & MerMail start working. But now the MerMail won't answer at all. Could this be some sort of corruption on the daughter board on the SSC (NTDK20DA rls02) that has gotten worse? Any suggestions or do I need to rebuild from the beginning? When I try to connect to the MerMail nothing happens! No response. Currently when I STAT AML it shows LYR2: ENABLED and LRY7: ENABLED. The MerMail shows green LED on and I can hear the drive running, but no other activity appears. I tried disabling and re-enabling AML 9 for both LYR2 & 7 but no change!

Any helpful ideas welcome...

...JIM....

 

[SL1User]

The problems you describe remember me on an typical NN story.

Nortel stopped for some stupid reason to deliver the card option mails for small systems with SCSI terminator. A few weeks later they came up and warned the field technicians to install the terminator in any case.

May be you are one of the victims of that action. Check if there is an terminator, if not, go and buy one that’s quicker than complaining with NN.

 

[johnpoole]

that patch load failure is a sign of poeeible corruption. in my case, i don't "buy" replacement parts. i just make a call and get a new one. i would replace the ssc and reprogram the switch. but i don't like trouble that comes back or can't be explained. if that is not a powwiblity, reload the patches and make sure you have a full load. also make sure that all the daughter boards are seated tight, i would power down and reseat all the cards.. like the last post said, that terminator must be fully seated.. i don't think the mail will boot without one. but then i never tried

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[SYQUEST]

Thanks for your responses. This switch has the Tandberg SCSI tape drive for the MerMail, since I installed this system originally, I don't recall if the terminator was a separate item or a switchable option on the drive. I will have to check. Since the MerMail has very little change activity the drive has not been used in a long time and is currently powered off. But I do know terminators can go bad!

Now, I have never just reloaded patches. What would be the procedure for that process? For reprogramming the switch can the backup PCMCIA of files be used or is this a 'program from scratch condition?'

The MerMail on this switch was a problem from the beginning I recall....
I will reseat the boards, etc. and report the results.

....JIM....

 

[johnpoole]

never heard of one dying, solder and copper has a pretty good shelf life. the board does not use both, the termanator, is removed to install the drive. if it's still in the switchroom.. might remove the tape drive and plug it bavk in. the tape drive can keep it from booting but it's a long shot.. do yourself a favor in the future, when the mail wouldn't come up on a power cycle, FORCE the vendor to find a fix or replace it. they are just like the people you work with, some good ones some just getting paid.. they don't like it when the trouble gets back over their local level. call up the chain until they actually do what they are getting paid to do. i've worked with every major phone company in the usa, it's a known fact, fix it before HQ gets in your bosses case..

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[SYQUEST]

In reference to my previous questions:
---------------------------------------------------
Now, I have never just reloaded patches. What would be the procedure for that process? For reprogramming the switch can the backup PCMCIA of files be used or is this a 'program from scratch condition?'
---------------------------------------------------
I'm going to try some things on the OP11C tomorrow and see if I can get the MerMail to work with the switch, but if it comes to starting over some answers to above would help very much.

The switch was bought from GTE Supply in 1999 for a client of the owner, but the client changed their mind and did not want it. It sat around for a couple of years, then got installed in 2003. I guess the warranty had expired by then. When contacting GTE Supply they wanted money to do anything and the owner did not like this. So this is kind of where we are now. Just a little history of this thing....

Oh John Poole, about the terminators going bad, solder & copper do have a long shelf life, -- but resistors can burn up or go open!

Waiting for answers....

....JIM....

 

[johnpoole]

true, but if the term was open, the system shouldn't boot. if you've done a physical on the term, and have any doubt replace it. i would not do a restore, i would do a new install and reprogram. you'll need the patches on a file from nortel or your source, then do the mdcs command in ld 143.. i don't do opt 11's very often but i have installed dozens. i have tried to boot one without a term and i got a security mismatch problem. but that was around rls 18 or so. if you have corruption, as opposed to hardware, without nortel or an eng level password a reload pick new install and reprogram the switch. i don't know your confort level with that, but i have had to do it on a 200 station 11 on a weekend. if you capture all of bars, cdb, sets etc to a txt file you can script it back in. the programing that you can print is not causing the problem.. since we can't program an aml link to go down once a week, we can't un or re program it to do that. bad news is that if it is the ssc card, or the mail interface, then the problem will still be there..

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc

 

[802]

Seen this once before caused my a failing drive in the mermail, caused many bizarre ripples across the system ,backup and try a new disk.

 

[SYQUEST]

Well the MERMAIL is now up and running! After looking at a few things once on prem I figured the MerMail was the major problem. I finally got AX to connect and every time I reset the MM it failed to run the task manager (PRM) - it could not find it! Looks like the drive got corrupted. I first tried a RECREATE & RESTORE, but that failed -- the drive was too far gone. So I did a complete install of the MM. Then used the full backup to restore the programming, but it had some problems. In the docs the backups talk about greetings and other data, but nothing is mentioned about the MAILBOXes themselves! After restoring the VS2 volume it looks like the program did not like something and it deleted the MBs--- something about it could not find 'cabinets' on volume 2---?? So I had to build these back in, only 6 on this system. The owner mentioned he had this problem once before w/ the backup. That might be a SW issue w/ 12.14, my guess.

The tape drive & terminator were fine. The SCSI terminator is internal to the tape drive and evidently the MM card didn't come with one. So there was NO running w/o the tape drive in this case. As far as the OS patches are concerned for the OP11C, I will have to do some research and look at LD43 & LD143. I quickly glanced at the docs on these and it mentioned something about extracting or saving patches.

John Poole, you mentioned something about the 'mdcs' command in LD143 in your post above. I looked in the docs to see what it is and found nothing. Can you explain the 'mdcs?'

Now that this MerMail is back in service, we will see over the next ten days if it stays that way or goes back to its old ways!

Thanks for all the ideas.

....JIM....

 

[johnpoole]

i can't say much about the opt 11 patch loading, i almost never get to play with anything smaller then an 81. in load 143, type mdcs return, that will give you a list a commands if your rls is new enough.. the extraction is needed because the patches as downloaded from nortel are zipped

john poole
bellsouth business
columbia,sc