[13781] in Athena Bugs
Extensive problems with vold on the Suns
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (wchuang@MIT.EDU)
Mon Aug 28 16:06:51 1995
From: wchuang@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 95 16:06:42 -0400
To: bugs@MIT.EDU
Hello...
We (the Athena Consultants) have been receiving extensive (many dozens)
reports of problems with "vold" on the Sun workstations.
Some of the errors include the standard "no such media or .... device
..." and others are of the nature "NFS server for volume management
(/vol) not responding still trying". Needless to say, the users do have
their DOS-formatted high density (and some double density) floppy disks
inserted correctly into the drive, and running "volcheck" does not help.
Of course, this also makes it really difficult for users to eject their
floppies because vold doesn't think there is one there.
These disks read in perfectly fine on IBMs, DECs and SGIs, but vold on
the Suns won't deal. Killing vold isn't a great option, but does work
(but it's quite troublesome, considering the change in the root password
and the hassle that creates).
On another note, it's not happening all the time, but it is occurring
enough that we get a fairly reasonable number of questions on it.
I would suggest upgrading the OS to 2.4 (or 2.5 when it comes out),
since vold in those versions is reputedly much more robust. This would
probably be a chore, I realize; however, 2.4 is a marked improvement
over 2.3.
-William
