Re: Quick Tale: Lost production database because of keyboard and Veritas Cluster Server

Rich Teer <rich_at_rite-group.com> wrote in message news:<Pine.GSO.4.44.0202272126480.16793-100000_at_grover.rite-group.com>...
> On Thu, 28 Feb 2002, RSH wrote:
>
> > Well regardless, (what IS this STOP-A stuff? I never heard it before, what
>
> Stop-A is a keyboard combination on Sun keyboards. Stop-A is a way
> of uncerimoniously (sp?) dropping a Sun to the OBP.
>
> > is it in ASCII... rut roh, please don't tell me they changed ASCII?!!), the
>
> DOn't worry, it's not ASCII! :-)

Yep, but you can send the CTRL-BREAK over telnet which can do the same thing if you are root.

If this isn't right, I've done something similar and I'm merely giving the wrong details. But I have done a Stop-A over telnet and hung my Sparc workstation at home while toying with this horrible idea.

>
> > poor guy didn't do this on purpose, I don't believe; and you do have to
> > admit regardless, that any single signal shouldn't trigger a mess like this
> > without some 'are you really sure you want to create weeks of Hell for
> > everyone in IT' screen, instead of dropping the system instantly.
>
> Well, I guess the system assumes that it's set up properly, and that
> you know what you're doing. UNIX has a habit of doing that... :-)

Very true! Maybe that's why I should have cloned myself to have a dedicated backup scripter!! We are very busy and lots of running with large swords around here. But anyone who's in the industry knows how it is. If not, please send me your recruiter's email! :) LOL

>
> > A physical button on the machine itself, okay. But not a signal that can be
> > generated so easily and unintentionally, and that can't be redefined by the
> > customer and at least be more than one keystroke separating life and death.
>
> A couple of points: Stop-A is a keyboard combination, so it's pretty
> hard to type accidentally. Also, keyboards are not hot swappable
> devices, and finally, a (Sun) server shouldn't have a keyboard
> attached to it in the first place.

Very true. I'm still reading about how to do a Stop-A nicely (there may be no such thing).

>
> Serial consoles use an RS232 break signal to drop the machine to
> the OK prompt, but more recent systems can change this behaviour
> to a different sequence, or disable it altogether (I wouldn't
> recommened the latter: you never know when you DO want to stop
> the machine in it's tracks).

More good comment. I have a Sun Ultra2 that I'm going to see if I can reproduce a similar situation with Oracle and work out OpenBoot's "sync" & "go" commands.

What do people do when they DO hit Stop-A and say "D'oh!"?

- go?
- sync?
- shutdown?