topic Re: booting openvms in rx 76400 hangs in Operating System - OpenVMS

booting openvms in rx 76400 hangs

ie3 — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 12:44:33 GMT

Hi,
I'm using the VMS Integrity and am trying to boot from HD the 8.3 OS or DVD on a used rx7640 server
I change the server patary and then i tray to boot from HD or DVD the OpenVMS banner and then it appears to hang, no I/O activity to the HD or DVD.
If I boot -flags 0,30000 the last couple messages on the screen are:

%SWAPPER-I-SHUFFLE, executing SWAPPER initialization code
%SWAPPER-I-SYSDISK, checking status of system disk

any help please,

Re: booting openvms in rx 76400 hangs

Steven Schweda — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 21:56:24 GMT

> [...] and then it appears to hang, no I/O activity to the HD or DVD.

I know almost exactly nothing about an rx7640, but I did find a User
Service Guide on the Web.

If you did see some DVD activity, but it stops when the console
output stops, then I'd guess that you're not looking at a misconfigured
console. (But, just in case, you might wish to disclose what you're
using for a console, how it's connected, and how the EFI console stuff
is set.)

When you're booting from a DVD, "checking status of system disk"
suggests to me that it's trying to do something with the DVD. I
wouldn't expect any hard-disk activity beyond some initial taking of
inventory (SYSMAN IO AUTOCONFIGURE).

The User Service Guide suggests that there are two DVD drive cables.
You might try the other one. (In a zx2000 (officially unsupported by
VMS), there are two IDE cables, one labeled "hard", and the other,
"optical", and VMS likes only the one labeled "hard". After seeing
that, I trust no one.)

Re: booting openvms in rx 76400 hangs

Steven Schweda — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 22:01:54 GMT

> [...] a used rx7640 server [...]

Was it running VMS before?

Is the firmware current?

Re: booting openvms in rx 76400 hangs

ie3 — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 06:36:55 GMT

thanks for replay,

yes i used the openvms 8.3 1H ,

we are updated the firmwar to the latest versions .

Re: booting openvms in rx 76400 hangs

Volker Halle — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 07:01:33 GMT

The expected sequence of debug messages would be:

...

%SWAPPER-I-SYSDISK, checking status of system disk
%SWAPPER-I-POOL, initializing paged pool

...

The system seems to be stuck in a close CPU loop waiting for the 'Valid' bit UCB$V_VALID in the system disk UCB (see module [SYS]SWAPPER). Any possible error message related to the system disk preceeding the above messages ?

Volker.

Re: booting openvms in rx 76400 hangs

Hoff — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 20:16:50 GMT

The original message posted here indicates a boot failure when attempting to boot OpenVMS I64 V8.3, and a reply seems to indicate that the server was previously successfully using OpenVMS I64 V8.3-1H1. If both of those two statements are correct, then this boot failure isn't particularly surprising.

OpenVMS I64 V8.3 is not supported on the Integrity rx7640 server. The Integrity rx7640 server minimally requires OpenVMS V8.3-1H1, and some hardware configurations can require more recent OpenVMS releases. In general, using HPE OpenVMS I64 V8.4 or VSI OpenVMS I64 V8.4-2 here would be preferable.

If you have another Integrity server around and also have some disk hardware that is common between the two such as matching storage shelves with a scratch disk and an open storage slot in the other, or have controllers supporting a common I/O bus between that server and your rx7640 server (e.g. parallel SCSI adapters, HBA adapters and FC SAN storage), load a copy of the distro onto a scratch disk that other server and access that or transfer that storage over to the problematic server and try booting from that, or configure and use host-based InfoServer and boot the rx7640 as a client of the box with a working configuration and working optical device.

If you're a hobbyist, download the current OpenVMS I64 V8.4 kit from HPE, and see if that works correctly here.

If you're working commercially, please contact whoever is providing your hardware and software support, or HPE or VSI support, and ask them for assistance. . This could be anything from a failed optical drive to bad optical media to some other hardware weirdness somewhere, or something in the configuration and the boot path that requires a newer OpenVMS release. It's also possible that EFI console device selection can get involved here, and that can lead to confusing output from the bootstrap.