No IPL possible, even not from IGNITE tape

[Reinhard Abraham]

Test server HP 9000 model D370/2. Shutdown 1 year ago. Trying to reactivate it now. Everything works fine until IPL. BOOT command does not work with any address, even not with any IGNITE tape we have found. HP-UX expert has left company. Has anybody any idea how to continue? It does not look like a hardware problem.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

The first thing you should do is interrupt the normal boot process. When the firmware monitor comes up, issue a "SEA" (search) command and let the system look for boot devices. I suspect that a "BOOT PRI" followed by an "Interact with ISL?" N will get you up.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

I agree with A. Clay.

If that does not work you may have a quorum problem on the boot volume group. More than 50% of the volume group disks must be present for the system to come up.

I have a dead system at home because it had two disks in vg00 and one of them died.

SEP

[Reinhard Abraham]

Thank you for the advices. The SEA command shows a lot of IPL devices including the tape drive (sequential). Inside the flap covering the disk drives it reads:
UX 10.20 8/4.8.0 PRI
UX 11.0 8/4.11.0 ALT
Both addresses are not shown by the SEA command. If used in a BOOT command, error messages are the same as at all other addresses:
"Cannot find ENTRA_TEST
Failed I/O operation with
ENTRY_IO
Status = -3 (partly -4)
3 rows of hex data, followed by
Error Reading IPL

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I would essentially ignore any written data and only trust what the SEA command is telling you.

I would first try: BOOT PRI Interact with ISL? N

Next I would try: BOOT ALT Interact with ISL? N

If these fail then continue with each device listed like BOOT P3.

It is possible that the disks have been wiped but unless your former admin left under poor terms, I would not suspect it.

[Reinhard Abraham]

Thank you for all replies. I will test all possible BOOT variances from disk. But: Why don't the IGNITE tapes not boot, my understanding so far was they should do? You can hear the tape drive operating for a few seconds, so it is known to the system.

Thank you
Reinhard

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Remember what you said: It does not look like a hardware problem. Were you using "The Force" to make this determination? As for your Ignite problem, just because a tape is labeled as an Ignite image does not mean that it is --- or that the make_tape_recovery command completed.

I don't suppose you had anyone actually try to boot this box unassisted BEFORE your admin left?

[Reinhard Abraham]

You are absolutely right, nobody tried to learn anything about the HP 9000 before our admin left - assuming that this machine will not be required any longer. But never say never. I will do some internal investigations about what happened when the machine was powered off, maybe this helps. But will take a few days until everybody is available. I will come back.

Reinhard

[Mike Shilladay]

Hi Reinhard,

Just a quick thought on this one - do you have any external disks, if they are not switched on you will get IPL errors.

Mike.

[Reinhard Abraham]

Hello All

We got it. When the server was shutdown one year ago somebody removed the interface cable between the disk subsystem and the DLT4000 tape drive (which contains the so-called "terminator"). We had good luck that the tape drive was still at its place on top of the HP box. Now IPL works fine again.

Thank you everybody for help.

Regards

Reinhard