IA64 VMS 8.3 Boot DVD

[Heuser-Hofmann]

Try this:

$ mount/for dqa0:
$ copy dqa0: disk:[dir]dvd.dsk
Burn the file dvd.dsk

Eberhard

Other tools are avail. for that task:

cdrtools (readcd) and dvdwrite (copy&verify)

e.

[GuentherF]

If I remember right the trick is to allocate a boot partition at the beginning of the LD device. To reserve the space at the begining you can define BACKUP$BAD_LBN and BACKUP$BAD_COUNT logicals (see DCL-INITIALIZE/BADBLOCKS) before you do the BACKUP/IMAGE to the LD device. Next you need a program to fill this boot partition (no idea where you get this program from). Next you burn all this to a DVD.

Note: If you make a BACKUP/IMAGE of this LD or DVD then BACKUP ignores the BADBLOCK area. Hence you cannot use this to produce another bootable DVD right away because you 'lost' the boot partition.

/Guenther

[GuentherF]

Forgot to mention...with a typical DVD utility program on your PC you can extract the first partitiom of the OpenVMS DVD onto a file which also should give you the size of this partition. Once you have create the LD device with the reserved (badblocks) partition starting at LBN:0 all you need is a little program to copy the boot partition file with logical I/Os into that reserved area on the LD.

/Guenther

[R. Verkerk]

Hello,

I just did a comparison between a standard Openvms DVD and the DVD I burned:

Standard OpenVMS:
ITA1:SYSTEM> setboot -s -f dqa0:
OpenVMS SETBOOT version V5.2-3
Boot Architecture : IA-64
Boot Address : 0x0018ae2c : 000001617452
Boot Size : 0x00001f40 : 000000008000
Boot Relative Offset : 0x00000002 : 000000000002
Master Boot Record : Legacy MBR


Home Grown DVD:
SJON01:SYSTEM> setboot -s -f $1$LDA100:
OpenVMS SETBOOT version V5.2-3
Boot Architecture : IA-64
Boot Address : 0x001b6148 : 000001794376
Boot Size : 0x0000fa00 : 000000064000
Boot Identifier GUID : C12A7328F81F11D2BA4B00A0C93EC93B
Boot Signature GUID : 07E4000400AA7BBB11DB8F60941729E1
Boot Relative Offset : 0x00000001 : 000000000001
Diagnostics Address : 0x000238a5 : 000000145573
Diagnostics Size : 0x000249f0 : 000000150000
Diagnostics Identifier GUID : E2A1E72832E311D6A6827B03A0000000
Diagnostics Signature GUID : 07E4000400AA7CBB11DB8F60941729E0
Diagnostics Relative Offset : 0x00000004 : 000000000004
Master Boot Record : Protective MBR


So there is some difference in the master boot record..

I will have to look further.. for it.

gr,

Robert.

[GuentherF]

Robert,

you are looking with setboot at the VMS known boot information. The real think on the bootable VMS DVD is in the 'badblocks' on the DVD which setboot doesn't look at. The VMS 'visible' boot information on the DVD is set to 'legacy' boot block which uses LBN 0 only. The setboot program uses the GPT
(Global Partition Table) style which uses a VMS visible file [000000]GPT.SYS to cover the partition areas inclusive the boot partition. In both cases (legacy and GPT) the boot partition points to a file system covered by SYS$LOADABLE_IMAGES:SYS$EFI.SYS. This is not the problem when creating a bootable DVD.

/Guenther

[alfred schreyer_2]

I have the same problem, the only bootable DVD I had produced was a 1 to 1 copy of the openvms distribution dvd. The problem seems to be explained very simple but I can not fix it myself. The cdrom filesystem is simply missing on every dvd which was made with the I64VMS$PCSI_INSTALL_MIN.COM. The image I made from the original distribution can be mounted with mount/media=cdrom and you can see the efi files on it. On every self made image, of course made by following exactly the instructions, dont have a cdrom portion. Besides I tried to get support with HP, they showed me the link to the mentioned documents about making bootable cd's in VMS but nobody really knows how it works and can not help. Even with dspp is no solution in sight.
greetings alfred

[R. Verkerk]

Hello,

I made a call within HP to get an answer. I will update it if I have a solution. (or not)

greetings,

Robert Verkerk

[R. Verkerk]

Hello,

This is the answer form HP:

From my experience, it seems a bootable DVD can be made if GPT is not used.

I use one of the following commands.

$ initialize /nogpt /cluster_size=4 lda:

or

$ run sys$system:sys$setboot
...
...
By default, the EFI console expects to see the Master Boot Record
(MBR) structure and GUID Partitioning Table (GPT) disk structures.
Use of both MBR and GPT is expected and is the default when the
disk is initialized for operations on OpenVMS I64. GPT operations
specifically require the file [000000]GPT.SYS be present. If the
GPT.SYS file is not present, MBR operations will be selected, and
no GPT operations are possible. If GPT.SYS is present, you can
optionally select the non-default MBR bootstrap. Do you wish to
override the expected selection process, and specifically use MBR?

Override selection? (Use MBR? YES or NO; default: NO) YES


What I did was use the second solution:

$ run sys$system:sys$setboot

After this I could boot from my DVD.

greetings,

Robert Verkerk

[R. Verkerk]

Fixed problem by using second solution from HP..

[Hoff]

I booted GPT-based DVDs all the time. Works fine.

Key is to follow the sequence from that Ask The Wizard topic 9820 exactly as written -- that's the sequence that was used for testing.

I added an error check for a mis-located GPT file and several other errors into setboot in V8.3. Prior to that, a mis-located GPT.SYS was capable of causing behaviour such as you have reported here.

If you find your disks are not booting with a GPT.SYS present, then it is probably a mis-located GPT (the MBR and GPT structures exist underneath the [000000]GPT.SYS file), and older (pre-V8.2) versions of BACKUP can easily produce these files.

There's a setboot option (SET BOOTBLOCK/MBR, IIRC) and a lower-level foreign-command option to force use of the MBR. The keyword is -m, IIRC. This disables the GPT path, and use of GPT.SYS. (If you do NOT have GPT.SYS, setboot automatically selects the MBR path.)

There are a bunch of qualifiers on SET BOOTBLOCK you can find with the Freeware VERB utility, and the help text at the setboot foreign command lists most everything at that level.

You can confirm location of [000000]GPT.SYS with a DUMP/HEADER. You should see exactly two extents, one at the front of the disk and one at the back. If you don't, then GPT.SYS is not correctly located on the target disk.

EFI uses the native sector size for its sector offsets, which is why you will see a factor of four difference between a disk-based bootstrap and a DVD-based bootstrap, and why you need to use either the /block_size=2048 qualifier, or the -2 on the foreign command, or the specification on the prompting-mode invoked by RUN.

The OpenVMS bootable DVD uses the El Torito bootstrap structures, and not the MBR or MBR/GPT bootstrap that's discussed here. El Torito is a variation of ISO-9660 that embeds the boot partition information into the ISO-9660 structures. If you want to create one of these, this is what Guenther is likely recalling -- using the bad block mechanism on INITIALIZE is one of the ways to deal with this, and to reserve the storage. (That step is not needed for MBR and for MBR/GPT bootstrap operations.)

There are tools in SYS$ETC: to copy block ranges, compare disks, and other such. See the CDDVD$TOOLS.CLD file.

DVD creation using programmed I/O is quite slow, and this is the speed enforced by the driver; the IDE I/O bus hardware and DQDRIVER stack on most OpenVMS systems is not anywhere near as speedy as most anyone would want. PCs and Macs will have hardware that will record significantly faster. Somewhat surprisingly, even USB 1.1 can be faster.

I'm posting up directions for creating CD and DVD media on OpenVMS over at the HoffmanLabs site. Contact me off-line if you'd like a review copy of the material.