newfs failure

[Dinah Anderson]

I have a CDC 9720 disk drive connected to a Ciprico rimfire controller.  I
am inconsistently getting the following error when I try to run
/etc/newfs:

premature EOF
/etc/fsirand /dev/rrf1g
: failed, status = 256

Can someone help me understand what this error means? This does not happen
everytime on the same file system. I have not figured out why it
starts/stops working. 

Dinah Anderson 
Shell Oil Company, Information Center (713) 795-3287
...!{sun,psuvax,soma,rice,ut-sally,ihnp4}!shell!dinah