Any limitation on no. Ethernet port on Alpha DS20E

[EWONG]

Hi,

We have a Alpha DS20E machine which is a cluster member, and the card distribution in PCI slot is,
1. FDDI card
2. Combo (2 x SCSI port + 1 x Ethernet)
4. SCSI Diff card
6. Combo ( 2 x SCSI port + 1 x Ethernet)

When we installed 2 x 4-port Ethernet card to slot 3 and 5 respectively. Then, the system was hung up during the startup and it seems it was stuck at,

%NET-I-LOADED, execute image SYS$NAME_SERVICES.EXE loaded

However, the other cluster member was started up successfully even there has 2 x 4-port Ethernet card installed at the same time, but they don't have 2 x Combo card.

Therefore, we tried to take out 2 x Combo card and the machine was started successfully.

Could you please advise whether any limiation on the no. of Ethernet port in a Alpha DS20E machine ?

Thanks,

[Steven Schweda]

http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/

http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/archive/

http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/archive/ds20e/index.html

http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/archive/ds20e/ds20e_tech.html

http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/options/asds20e/asds20e_All_options.html#OptListHead

It's not clear from that list how many cards
you can have of multiple types, but "4" seems
to be the largest maximum for any one type.

If you add cards to an already configured
system, the old device names may change, and
this might confuse the old network
configuration. No bets, but you might try
disabling all the network stuff, rebooting,
and then configuring everything from a clean
starting place.

[Volker Halle · Accepted solution]

Edmond,

besides the possible change of network device names by addition of new network cards, your system may also need additional resources (like nonpaged pool) to accomodate and start the various network protocols.

If the system has reached NET$STARTUP.COM during boot, all the network devices have already been configured and cluster protocol (SCS) has already been started on them (by default).

You could either try to force a crash: press HALT button, then >>> CRASH and find out, why the system was hung or you could boot with STARTUP_P1="MIN" and check your DECnet configuration, especially NET$CSMACD_STARTUP.NCL for network device mapping.

Volker.

[EWONG]

Thanks Volker,

I am also afraid there be some resource quota issue, so the crash dump has been sent to HP for analysis.

Thanks a lot.