TCPIP Pause At Startup

[Joseph Huber_1]

Whatever the reasons and methods to find out, if You just want to avoid the "pause" at TCPIP startup in this test boot situation, I would recommend to indicate through one of the USER* system parameters that no network is connected. This can then be used by systartup_vms to skip TCPIP (and related) startup.
If You disconnect the cable, then I assume You have access to the console and can do a conversational bootstrap to set and reset the system parameters.

[Jack Trachtman]

Thanks everyone for your thoughts.

Within the next week I should be able to try some tests. I will enable VERIFICATION
for TCPIP startup as one test.

In ref to ethernet sniffing - any way to use TCPTRACE from the host I'm booting? I realize this is like a chicken&egg (ie why should TCPTRACE be available before TCPIP startup completes?), but with the host off of the network, I can't run another box to sniff it.

[Volker Halle]

Jack,

you might be able to use tcpdump to trace all IP packets into (should be none if the NIC is disconnected) and out of your node.

$ @SYS$MANAGER:TCPIP$DEFINE_COMMANDS
$ SPAWN/NOWAIT tcpdump

TCPTRACE might also work, but you need to send output to a file and specify a high number for /PACKETS.

Try both methods manually first.

You certainly can't start tcpdump or tcptrace, before TCPIP is up, but you need to add those trace start commands into some of the TCPIP startup procedure ONCE you've figured out, where it hangs... Then add the start trace command in some procedure executed BEFORE that hang.

Volker.

[Robert Atkinson]

Jack - packet sniffing is a complete overkill.

As you can see from the example below, you'll get enough information from OPA0 to determine which module is giving problems :-

%%%%%%%%%%% OPCOM 8-NOV-2005 16:39:20.64 %%%%%%%%%%%
Message from user INTERnet on ALPHA
INTERnet ACP Activate RSH Server

%%%%%%%%%%% OPCOM 8-NOV-2005 16:39:51.56 %%%%%%%%%%% (from node BETA at
8-NOV-2005 16:39:51.24)
Message from user SYSTEM on BETA
%SMHANDLER-S-STARTUP, server management event handler startup

%%%%%%%%%%% OPCOM 8-NOV-2005 16:48:48.30 %%%%%%%%%%%
Message from user INTERnet on ALPHA
INTERnet ACP Activate SMTP Server

%TCPIP-S-STARTDONE, TCPIP$SMTP startup completed
%%%%%%%%%%% OPCOM 8-NOV-2005 16:48:48.72 %%%%%%%%%%%
Message from user INTERnet on ALPHA
INTERnet ACP Activate SNMP Server

You then need to work out why, which is almost certainly DNS related for these sort of delays.

What you need to start thinking about is how you can change the settings, i.e. remove unknown DNS servers before you boot the system.

Perhaps you could store a default version of the config file, and rename this over when you unplug your NIC cable?

Rob.

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

I have now DNS enabled on my node.
I booted with no networks.
In hang for 3min30.

Jack : did you find the solution ?

Wim

[Robert Atkinson]

Wilm, what was the last console message before the boot hung?

Robert.

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

The last message was "LPD symbiont has started".

I redid the boot with a tcptrace to sys$output. But it didn't work because you can not start tcptrace before tcpip.

So I did my interactive trace during startup of tcpip (trace for protocol IP). Not 1 record was shown. At the end of the startup (thus after the hang, records with to=from=127.0.0.1 were shown.

Wim

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

The 127 records were snmp related. And only RCV.

Wim

[Robert Atkinson]

If you run '$ tcpip generate service /configuration/file=a.a' and have a look at the file, I'd bet the next service after LPD is SMTP?

Rob.

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Wrong. I did debugging and found that until the startup of rsh everything went smooth. It's the startup of SMTP that is delaying everything.

Wim