Network booting V4.7 from a V5.5 server

[Jan van den Ende]

Stanley,

_even_ if you wanted those systems to be clustered, NI-clustering was only introduced in V5, so V4.7 will not go.

I strongly agree with Ian: un-coordinated access by two (more) systems to the same disk is _THE_ optimum scenario for disaster!.

Of course the loading WILL start: at first it is only the boot-server that accesses the drive, just to read some files and transfer them over the net.

Now, _IF_ that was a VaxELN (or any other) memory-resident image, that does not require (write) access to the disk, THEN that is OK.
I see no way in which you can MSCP serve a disk to nodes that are not members of the local cluster.


I will follow this thread with a most curious interest!!

Proost.

Have one on me.

Jan

[Uwe Zessin]

That's not _quite_ correct, Jan.

A very simple NI-style clustering with a single boot node was introduced with VMS V4.5c or around that release.

[Bojan Nemec]

Jan,

There was a special V4.7A version which introduced the NI-clustering.


Bojan

[Uwe Zessin]

The "A" in V4.6A and V4.7A was processor support for some MicroVAX machines.

[Volker Halle]

Stanley,

regarding the RMTNOTCLS error message, this article may help:

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/asktima/operating_systems/CHAMP_SRC930603000522.html

Volker.

[Stanley F Quayle]

To summarize the discussion here and on comp.os.vms, it seems that this doesn't work unless the system becomes a member of the cluster. And I've confirmed that at the customer's site -- the network-booting system joins the cluster.

So, does VMS 4.7 cluster with VMS 5.5-2?

[Volker Halle · Accepted solution]

Stanley,

the cluster software version (CLU$GB_CLUVER) for V5.1 (or higher) is 6, but for V4.7 it's supposed to be 2. And you can only cluster 2 nodes, if the cluster software version is not more than 1 version number apart.

I don't have a V4.7 system at hand, but you can find out the version with SDA:

$ ANAL/SYS ! example from an E8.2 system
SDA> exa clu$gb_cluver
CLU$GB_CLUVER: 00000000.00000006 "........"

Volker.

[Stanley F Quayle]

> And you can only cluster 2 nodes, if the cluster software version is not more than 1 version number apart.

Interesting. I checked the value on both V5.5-2H4 and V7.3, and it's 6. But I know that I can't cluster (successfully) these versions. The V5.5-2H4 system joins the cluster and then hangs...

I'll have the client check the version on his V4.7 system...

[Volker Halle]

Stanley,

the new node should crash itself with a CLUSWVER bugcheck, if the cluster software versions are incompatible with existing nodes in a cluster.

If it 'hangs', something else may be wrong/incompatible. Just force a crash on the hanging node and try to look around with SDA.

Volker.

[Stanley F Quayle]

Well, that's not important to this problem. I'm still trying to find out how to boot this V4.7 system.

I suppose I *could* have the device have its own system disk, and access everything else via DECnet.