topic Re: Upgrade of Alpha Open VMS 7.1 to boot on a DS-20E in Operating System - OpenVMS

Upgrade of Alpha Open VMS 7.1 to boot on a DS-20E

Allan Dillon — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 23:43:43 GMT

What patches are required to upgrade a 7.1 system to boot on a DS-20E
What is required before DEC AXPVMS 712 UPDATE V3.0.

When I try this I get "product DEC AXPVMS VMS, to which maintenance product DEC ASPVMS 712_UPDATE_V3.0 applies, was not found.

Re: Upgrade of Alpha Open VMS 7.1 to boot on a DS-20E

Hein van den Heuvel — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 23:45:52 GMT

Please consider going to 7.3-2, if not 8.3

Hein.

Re: Upgrade of Alpha Open VMS 7.1 to boot on a DS-20E

Allan Dillon — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 23:47:47 GMT

Thanks for your quick responce.
I would if I could avoid the TCPIP upgrade.
Is that possible ?

Re: Upgrade of Alpha Open VMS 7.1 to boot on a DS-20E

Steven Schweda — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 01:00:21 GMT

> What patches are required to upgrade a 7.1
> system to boot on a DS-20E

The question is, "What is the minimum VMS
version supported on a DS20E?"

According to:

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/10445_na/10445_na.html

Minimum OS support: Tru64 UNIX V4.0F,
OpenVMS V7.1-2 or V7.2-1

"DEC AXPVMS 712 UPDATE V3.0" is a patch kit
for VMS V7.1-2, not for V7.1, hence that
complaint.

To get from V7.1 to V7.1-2, I believe that
you need the medium kit for V7.1-2. Patches
won't do it.

As I don't pay for this stuff, I, too, would
certainly jump to at least V7.3-2.

> I would if I could avoid the TCPIP upgrade.
> Is that possible ?

Nowadays, there's pretty much a 1-to-1
correspondence between VMS versions and
TCPIP versions. VMS V7.3-2 needs TCPIP V5.4,
VMS V8.3 needs TCPIP V5.6, and so on.

What makes a TCPIP upgrade a problem? (Or a
worse problem than the VMS upgrade?) (V5.4
is bad enough. Who'd want to stay at
something older?)

Re: Upgrade of Alpha Open VMS 7.1 to boot on a DS-20E

Allan Dillon — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:38:02 GMT

We communicate to a Yokogawa gateway. When I tried to communicate with VMS 7.3-2 it failed. With VMS 7.1 it worked.
So I was trying to see if I could get the 7.1 + patches to run on the DS-20E.

Thanks again for your ideas and help.

Re: Upgrade of Alpha Open VMS 7.1 to boot on a DS-20E

Volker Halle — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 13:02:54 GMT

Allan,

welcome to the OpenVMS ITRC forum.

What problem are you trying to solve ?

As Steven already told you, you can't run OpenVMS V7.1 on a DS20E, it requires at least V7.1-2. To get to V7.1-2, you need to upgrade OpenVMS via the OpenVMS Alpha V7.1-2 Operating System CD.

Volker.

Re: Upgrade of Alpha Open VMS 7.1 to boot on a DS-20E

Allan Dillon — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 19:10:35 GMT

Now it gets silly.

On a single ethernet DEC 3600s the VMS 7.2-2
does communicate.

On the DS-20E with 2 ethernet cards it doesn't. I have done a
mc ncp set circ ewa-0 state off
verified with a tcpip ping test
so only 1 port "connected" still no luck.

Config of system ?
Config of second ethernet card ?
EWA-0 is 100MBit/sec
EWA-1 is 10MBit/sec is that a factor ?

I don't think it is the TCPIP version now.

Tricky hey ?

Re: Upgrade of Alpha Open VMS 7.1 to boot on a DS-20E

Steven Schweda — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 19:23:56 GMT

> Now it gets silly.

It certainly gets confusing.

> On a single ethernet DEC 3600s the VMS
> 7.2-2 does communicate.

What's a "DEC 3600s"? Communicate how> With
what?

> Config of system ?

That's one of the things I'd like to know.

> Tricky hey ?

Hard to say, with so little useful info.

Did I miss something, or did you never
describe the actual problem which you are
trying to solve, what the equipment is, and
how it's all connected? It night be nice to
see what you did, what happened when you did
it, and what you expected to happen instead.

You may know what you're talking about, but I
don't see how a casual reader could have a
clue. As I recall, this thread began with a
question about a VMS upgrade. Now it seems
to be a about a communication problem. I'm
lost.

Re: Upgrade of Alpha Open VMS 7.1 to boot on a DS-20E

Allan Dillon — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 22:25:11 GMT

These Alpha boxes are used to communicate with Yokogawa ECGW3 gateways.

PASCAL code on the VMS uses Sys$Assign, $QIO
calls to communicate through a channel associated with the INET device socket "UCX$Device".

This works on the DEC3600s but NOT the DS-20E.

This DS-20E is supposed to replace a VAX 4600
with 2 ethernet cards. It communicates to 2 networks (1 people, 1 instrumentation).

I'm trying to replace this old VAX (VMS 7.1 UCX 4.2).

What I've tried.

DEC3600s VMS 7.1 instrument network (only) communicates :)

DEC3600s VMS 7.2.2 instrument network (only)
communicates :)

DS-20E VMS 7.2.2 people network and instrument network NO communication :(

The error message is 556 - %System-F-Timeout, device timeout

As the software is the same (7.2-2) I was hoping that I needed to do TCPIP config some how.

Sorry I am so bad at describing the problem precisely. Does the above help at all ?

Re: Upgrade of Alpha Open VMS 7.1 to boot on a DS-20E

Hoff — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 22:49:06 GMT

Regarding your timeout, that could be a whole host of errors, from network hardware to your host configuration to a hardware problem to a software problem, or otherwise.

(Without intending to be rude, a general and high-level text description of what the Pascal source code is doing here is not likely going to be helpful; there's just way too much going on here within the code, and within the underlying configuration, and within the configuration of the LAN(s) and subnet(s).)

This timeout could easily be a latent source code bug that was exposed by the move from V7.1 on a uniprocessor to a more current OpenVMS version and TCP/IP Services version on a multiprocessor system such as the AlphaServer DS20E configuration.

Given the code works on the "instrument" network (subnet?), and fails when connected on both the "instrument" and the "people" network, this could certainly imply the network configuration and routing might also be a trigger for the error. Or something flaky in the IP stack. But I'd start out with an attempt to establish connectivity with ping and such.

Stephen Hoffman
HoffmanLabs LLC

--

FWIW, there is no such box as a "DEC3600" system. There does exist a DEC 3000 model 600 series, which is what I will assume you are working with here. If so, that's an old TURBOchannel Alpha box. There are a number of other VAX and Alpha boxes with similar model names, too.

Re: Upgrade of Alpha Open VMS 7.1 to boot on a DS-20E

Steven Schweda — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:06:22 GMT

> Sorry I am so bad at describing the problem
> precisely.

Same here.

> Does the above help at all ?

Some. Not much.

> These Alpha boxes are used to communicate
> with Yokogawa ECGW3 gateways.

Let's try not to care for now.

> It communicates to 2 networks (1 people, 1
> instrumentation).

Two physically separate networks? IP
addresses? Netmasks?

> What I've tried.
> [...]

What are the IP address and netmasks for
these systems?

> I was hoping that I needed to do TCPIP
> config some how.

If you haven't done any, then you may need to
do some. The usual starting place is:

@ SYS$MANAGER:TCPIP$CONFIG.COM

but you will need to fill in some blanks with
locally valid information.

Can you use something simple like PING or
Telnet to test the IP communication between
these systems?

Re: Upgrade of Alpha Open VMS 7.1 to boot on a DS-20E

Allan Dillon — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:30:46 GMT

Okay some gaps I can fill.

Both networks have a mask of 255.255.255.0

People Network address 134.144.68.16
Instrument 134.144.69.16

Physically separate.

Yes it pings (on both DS-20E and old DEC 3000 600 server)

TCPIP> Ping Glgyg1A (name) Pings
TCPIP> Ping 134.144.69.14 (Address) Pings

Router 134.144.68.1 and 134.144.69.1

Our test/debugging program returns the following.

Local host GLGCTL (upper case)
Remote host GLGYG1A
Remote port 31000
VMSChannel 336
Device name _BG9320:
Returned Status 556

Re: Upgrade of Alpha Open VMS 7.1 to boot on a DS-20E

Steven Schweda — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 23:45:57 GMT

> People Network address 134.144.68.16
> Instrument 134.144.69.16

And these are the addresses of what?

> Yes it pings [...]

And "it" is what?

> TCPIP> Ping Glgyg1A (name) Pings
> TCPIP> Ping 134.144.69.14 (Address) Pings

Where did you do this? What is Glgyg1A?

I'm sure that some of this stuff is clear to
you, but you're talking to people who know
only what you tell them, and so far you have
not offered a useful description of much.

Some things which might be nice:

A list of host names and addresses. (This
includes addresses for all interfaces on each
host, if there are multiples.)

TCPIP SHOW INTERFACE

Some evidence of who can talk to whom.

Re: Upgrade of Alpha Open VMS 7.1 to boot on a DS-20E

Allan Dillon — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:22:02 GMT

Sorted !

Steven I owe you serveral beers/Slabs.

When I checked the TCPIP host names I found
that both ethernet devices were the same.
Our old VAX is like this too.
Once I made the second ethernet address unique (Glg69Ctl) it worked...

That's why it communicated with the 1 ethernet device.

Many thanks to everyone who commented it all helped.

Re: Upgrade of Alpha Open VMS 7.1 to boot on a DS-20E

Allan Dillon — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:23:36 GMT

Sorted see previous response.