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chasg · Oct 30, 2007, 04:50 PM

Hi All,

Well, after 8 hours, I've managed to resurrect my dual 2.0GHz G5 desktop machine (Leopard installed, kernel panics, back to 10.4).

I installed Leopard on it, and was getting kernel panics. I finally narrowed it down: panics only happened with my Sonnet 500P external eSATA box was on (driven by a Sonnet Tempo SATA X4P card). They didn't happen instantly, but usually within a minute or two of switching on. I even got a kernel panic during Leopard installation (as a matter of fact, I got that panic the first time I tried to install, not an auspicious beginning!).

fyi: while trying to isolate the problem, I installed Leopard on two different drives: my original boot disk with an "archive and install" and, when I started getting panics, then I installed a vanilla copy on an empty FW800 disk. Still got panics with the 500P was powered up.

I don't think it's the eSATA card itself, because I managed to fully restore my boot drive to 10.4.10 from backup (while booted into Leopard), and the card was of course powered up the whole time. It's just when the 500P was on that there were problems.

fyi: the 500P has three JBOD disks in it, plus two disks striped as RAID 0 (which, by the way, aren't used by the Finder, only by Photoshop).

I'm back in 10.4.10 now and everything is running nicely as before. I'm gutted, I really wanted, in particular, "back to my mac" and built-in VNC functionality.

I've got an email into Sonnet, but as I understand even developers had to wait until the release date to get a GM version of Leopard, I'm guessing I'm months away from a fix :-(

Anyone else have a remotely similar problem?

Chas

delrossi · Oct 30, 2007, 06:18 PM

I had Leopard freezing when I had a drive connected to my Sonnet 4+4 card.
I went to Sonnet's site and downloaded the firmware updater. All's right with the world again

Camali · Oct 30, 2007, 11:14 PM

So how did install the update? On a Tiger partition or with Leopard already installed?

Right now, if it needs Tiger to update, I have to install it on a separate drive, update, reboot and plug the card back in once the update complete, just too lazy to try this out.

delrossi · Oct 31, 2007, 06:56 AM

On a super clean virgin Leopard install.

chasg · 08:55 AM

Many thanks for the pointer delrossi, I'm installing the update now (silly of me to not think of this myself :-/

Wish me luck!

Chas

chasg · Oct 31, 2007, 08:56 AM

Well, it _almost_ worked.

No more kernel panics, but two of the drives in my Sonnet array aren't mounting (Disk First Aid finds something to repair, I then try to mount them, there is an error, then Disk First Aid has something new to repair).

Three of the drives in the array _are_ mounting: two are a striped RAID 0 pair, the other a mere JBOD. The two that aren't mounting are JBOD.

How strange is that?

Chas

delrossi · Oct 31, 2007, 12:57 PM

Sorry to hear that. Did you try to boot up in Tiger and repair the disk there, and then try leopard?

thatkeith · Nov 5, 2007, 06:02 AM

Originally Posted by delrossi

I had Leopard freezing when I had a drive connected to my Sonnet 4+4 card.
I went to Sonnet's site and downloaded the firmware updater. All's right with the world again

Was this the SonnetSATA2.1.2.pkg firmware updater, available at http://www.sonnettech.com/support/do...osatafamilymac ?

I am having similar problems: Leopard freezing my dual 2.0GHz G5 at some point when or shortly after I turn on my eSATA Raid drive (connected to a Tempo 4x4 card) but behaving perfectly if I leave it turned off. I installed Leopard on a different internal drive so I am able to go back to Tiger - and have done for now - with no problems.

I'll try the firmware updater tonight. I see that it was released on August 31st, some time before Leopard went to GM, let alone got to public release. However, that's the only relevant thing I could see on the Sonnet site. If you know of another one I'd really appreciate a URL.
But before I install it I think I'll make a backup of everything on that Raid setup. Can't have too many backups, eh?

Wish me luck...

Keith

chasg · Nov 5, 2007, 07:40 AM

Delrossi:

I did exactly that: restarted in Tiger and use Disk Warrior to repair the disks (Disk First aid _said_ that it repaired the disks, but they still wouldn't mount). As for trying Leopard again, I think that, for this particular machine, I'm going to wait until 10.5.50 is released <heh heh>. Leopard is working nicely on my Macbook Pro though (except that the mouse jumps around sometimes).

Keith: I've been in contact with a very helpful Sonnet tech, and 2.1.2 is the latest firmware for both your and my Tempo cards. Installing the update solved the kernel panics in Leopard on my G5, but I'm back to 10.4.10 until Leopard sorts itself out (ah yes, the curse of the overly eager early adopters :-)

Best of luck to you both,

Chas

thatkeith · Nov 5, 2007, 08:26 PM

Originally Posted by chasg

Keith: I've been in contact with a very helpful Sonnet tech, and 2.1.2 is the latest firmware for both your and my Tempo cards. Installing the update solved the kernel panics in Leopard on my G5, but I'm back to 10.4.10 until Leopard sorts itself out (ah yes, the curse of the overly eager early adopters :-)

Thanks for the recommendation of the Sonnet tech support, it proved wonderfully useful.
I downloaded the firmware updater and checked the Read me before continuing with the process. (I know, but _someone_ has to read 'em!) I noted that it claimed to be for Mac Pro machines only. I ran it anyway, but had no change of behaviour on my dual 2.0GHz G5.

I sent an email off to Sonnet's tech support and got a reply really quickly. I followed the advice and it cured my problem _entirely_. I was also very impressed by the guy's fresh, open attitude. Here's his message, in case it helps someone else:

Keith,
Actually that's a typo in the Read Me notes of the firmware updater. Who'd have thunk that folks actually read a Read Me? ;-) No one reads the Read Me file

Basically the Mac Pro driver was created first and from that our software guy created the firmware updater. Well, he just cut and pasted the Read Me from one to the other. So we alerted him and he's already got it fixed for the next version of firmware he's working on.

If this was really only for the Mac Pro, it wouldn't have run at all. It would have told you "this software is for Intel only" and offered you a choice of quitting it.

So I suspect that an older version of the firmware is cached away in 10.5 somewhere. So disconnect all the drives and boot into Leopard and do the following:

Delete and empty trash for the three (3) following files and directories:

/System/Library/Extensions.mkext (a file)
/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kernelcaches (a directory)
/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.romextensions (a directory)

The last directory might not exist so don't worry about it if it isn't there. Restart after you do this so OS X will rebuild some of the files.

This has cured problems for a lot of folks. Let me know what happens.

I hope this helps others too. Top marks to Sonnet!

Keith