topic Re: Disabling old HBA cards on ES45 Alphaserver in Operating System - OpenVMS

Disabling old HBA cards on ES45 Alphaserver

Paul Whapshott — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:15:48 GMT

Hi,

I have 2 older HBA cards on an ES45 Server running vms 8.3. I am not in a position to take out the cards but would like to disable them so they do not show up to the operating system.

Is there anyway this can be done.

The HBA's show up as FGA0 and FGC0 and show as online as present.
I cannot see anything that can be done to disable using the set device command, but perhaps it can be done from the ES45 firmware ?

Regards,

Paul

Re: Disabling old HBA cards on ES45 Alphaserver

Ronald Y. Salem — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:19:53 GMT

Run $ @sys$startup:tcpip$config and in the options, select 2 for INTEFACES... Then, you can disable the the HBA that you wanted to.

Re: Disabling old HBA cards on ES45 Alphaserver

Ronald Y. Salem — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:21:34 GMT

Run $ @sys$startup:tcpip$config and in the options, select 1 for CORE ENVIRONMENT, and then select 2 for INTERFACES... Then, you can disable the the HBA that you wanted to.

Re: Disabling old HBA cards on ES45 Alphaserver

EdgarZamora_1 — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:25:24 GMT

TCPIP$CONFIG?????

The simplest way is probably to use SYSMAN IO SET EXCLUDE. You can get help within sysman.

Re: Disabling old HBA cards on ES45 Alphaserver

Paul Whapshott — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:27:24 GMT

Ronald,

These are fibre cards and not network cards so this is not the solution. Thanks anyway.

Regards,

Paul

Re: Disabling old HBA cards on ES45 Alphaserver

Steven Schweda — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:59:44 GMT

> SYSMAN IO SET EXCLUDE.

See also SYS$MANAGER:SYCONFIG.COM/.TEMPLATE,
which is the suggested place to put any
SYSMAN IO SET EXCLUDE
or
SYSMAN IO AUTOCONFIGURE /EXCLUDE
commands. (The former being pretty
permanent, while latter may be overcome
manually, if you ever want to do so.)

Note, however, that (when last I looked) if
you set STARTUP$AUTOCONFIGURE_ALL == 0 (as
suggested), you also lose SYS$FTDRIVER and
SYS$PIPEDRIVER, so it pays to steal the code
for those from
SYS$STARTUP:VMS$DEVICE_STARTUP.COM. Mine
says things like:

$ if (.not. f$getdvi( "fta0", "EXISTS"))
$ then
$ mcr sysman
io connect fta0 /noadapter /driver = sys$ftdriver
$ endif
$!
$ if (.not. f$getdvi( "mpa0", "EXISTS"))
$ then
$ mcr sysman
io connect mpa0 /noadapter /driver = sys$pipedriver
$ endif

Also:

$! SYS$STARTUP:VMS$DEVICE_STARTUP.COM also skips code like the
$! following, which starts the CONFIGURE process, needed for
$! detecting [T]MSCP-served devices on other cluster members.
$!
$ if (.not. f$getsyi( "NOAUTOCONFIG"))
$ then
$!
$! Check for running CONFIGURE process. Start one, if not found.
$! (Trust SYSTEM not to run a different CONFIGURE process.)
$!
$ ctx = ""
$ x = f$context( "PROCESS", ctx, "PRCNAM", "CONFIGURE", "EQL")
$ x = f$context( "PROCESS", ctx, "USERNAME", "SYSTEM", "EQL")
$ pid = f$pid( ctx)
$ if (pid .eqs. "")
$ then
$ @ sys$startup:vms$initial-050_configure.com
$ endif
$ endif

Otherwise, what could go wrong?

Re: Disabling old HBA cards on ES45 Alphaserver

John Gillings — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:33:51 GMT

Paul,

What's your objective? Yes, you can see the FG devices when you look (SHOW DEVICE), but apart from a few bytes of memory for the UCB structures, the devices are pretty much benign. Why do you think they're a problem that needs to be fixed?

As Steven has shown, you can disable autoconfigure to prevent the devices from being configured, but then you need to take responsibility for configuring various other, completely unrelated devices. More code to be debugged, more stuff to remember to manage and more things to potentially go wrong.

I'd have said the risks of going to the trouble of preventing the devices from configuring themselves are far greater than just ignoring them. Moreover, even if you succeed, all it will take is someone issing a SYSMAN IO AUTO command (which is reasonable to do in some circumstances) and they'll be back, requiring a reboot to remove them.

Re: Disabling old HBA cards on ES45 Alphaserver

Steven Schweda — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 22:20:37 GMT

> [...] all it will take is someone issing a
> SYSMAN IO AUTO command [...]

I thought that SYSMAN IO SET EXCLUDE would
prevent them from appearing, ever, but that
SYSMAN IO AUTOCONFIGURE /EXCLUDE could be
overcome.

That's why I used AUTOCONFIGURE /EXCLUDE when
I wanted to keep something out. It was an
old Yamaha CRW4416S CD-R/RW drive, which,
when auto-configured, would appear at all
eight LUNs. So I excluded DKA5*, and then
explicitly selected DKB500. Crude, but
effective. Especially after I found and
re-activated all the stuff which got tossed
out unexpectedly when I set
STARTUP$AUTOCONFIGURE_ALL to zero. It took
me so long to get all that stuff to work
right, that when I replaced the old CD-writer
with one which behaved better, I couldn't
bring myself to take out all of my
hard-won-victory code.

Anyway, I'm not advocating doing it, but if
a fellow wants to dig himself a hole, who am
I to hoard my spade?