H164870:  NETFINITY 5500 & 5500-M10: NETWARE 4.11 SMP INSTALL PROBLEMS


 SYMPTOM:

 During the Novell NetWare 4.11 SMP installation, the problem
 will appear as either an inability to see the NetWare
 partitions, or a red screen stating that the drives are
 inaccessible during NetWare volume creation.

 PROBLEM ISOLATION AIDS:

 - The system is one of the following Netfinity servers:
      a Netfinity 5500, Type 8660, any Model.
      a Netfinity 5500 M10, Type 8661, any Model.

 - The system is installing Novell NetWare 4.11 SMP.

 - The system has one of the symptoms described.
 FIX:

 Ensure the disk controller on which NetWare is being installed
 does not share the IRQ with any other adapter. Install Support
 Pack 5B before loading SMP support. Support Pack 5B has a newer
 version of MPS14.PSM which fixes the problem.

 DETAILS:

 The problem is caused by an interrupt routing problem in the
 MPS14.PSM module that occurs when the following conditions are
 met:
      1) More than 1 disk controller on the same IRQ.
      2) Both disk controllers on the same PCI bus.
      3) NetWare 4.11 SMP support is loaded.
      4) IPSRAID.HAM driver is loaded for more than 1 adapter.
 The first adapter loaded will not be able to see its
 partitions. If the integrated ServeRAID controller is enabled,
 it will always be the first adapter loaded.

 The problem does not occur with NetWare 3.x or NetWare 5.0 or
 after Support Pack 4 or later (IWSP4.EXE or IWSP5B.EXE) are
 applied to the NetWare 4.11 system.

 TRADEMARKS:

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DATE: October 8, 1998