LSI mega_sas.ham driver fails to load when restarting NetWare without rebooting system

The LSI mega_sas.ham driver may fail to load if a NetWare server is shut down to DOS and then restarted by loading server.exe. This problem does not occur when a system is cold booted and NetWare is loaded. It also does not occur if NetWare is running and "restart server” or "reset server” is invoked.

In order to see this problem the default action of NetWare must be changed. The default is to power the system off when NetWare is shut down. In order to see this problem, a set command must be changed to shut down and go to the DOS prompt (set server power down options = off). When this set parameter is turned off, NetWare displays a message when downing the server that says in part "Novell recommends cycling the power on your server before restarting NetWare."

There are two ways to resolve this issue. The safest is to avoid loading server.exe without cold or warm booting the system.

There is another simple work around that also resolves this problem. This solution has not been thoroughly tested, but works in all instances that have been tested. The solution is to load the mega_sas.ham driver twice. If the server is being reloaded after having shut down to DOS, then it will fail to load the first time but load successfully the second time. If the server is being loaded for the first time, then the first load will be successful and the second one will fail (because it is already loaded). To automate this, edit the startup.ncf file and add an additional load statement for the mega_sas.ham driver with the same parameters (i.e. slot number).

There is also another workaround to resolve this problem. You can put a DELAY before and after loading the MEGA_SAS.HAM device driver.