Alpha DS15 Tru64 5.1B " NHD7 " CD

[Eric van Dijken]

(An other re-read)

No, you cannot combine the original Tru5.1B set with the NHD7 set, into a installtion cdrom which installs NHD7 together with Tru5.1B.

Normally you would install 5.1B and than update it with NHD7.

But as the DS15 requires drivers which are only in the NHD7 set. You have to install using a special way.
This requires many cd swaps, which is not pretty. But does work.

Slipstreaming both cd's into 1 cd....... (my best guess, is not HP supported. And a lot of hard and difficult (non-documented, or HP internal use only) work. I am not saying it can't be done. Unless you have 200+ systems, i wouldn't burn my fingers on it.)

[Brandon Malli]

Does anyone have any tips on creating the the 5.1B boot cd with a working DS15 kernel? I'm really not sure what format the boot cd needs to be in...my guess is UFS.

[Eric van Dijken]

It will be very hard to create a cd which will install Tru64 UNIX on a DS15, without any special tricks.

During Tru64 installation, kernel sources are installed on the system. And a new/fresh kernel will be build. But these sources will not include the "NHD7" drivers, which are needed to make a working DS15 kernel.....


As for the special tricks, maybe you can overwrite the kernel sources, with the DS15 kernel sources during the "postload" phase of the installation process. Maybe that will do the trick, but haven't tried that myself.

[Brandon Malli]

I actually don't intend to do an install from the CD - only to get a CD that is bootable without doing all the disk swaps that come with using the ">>> boot -fl fa -fi "GENERIC" dqa0" command. Basically we do a lot of system restores and we used to boot off of CD - restore the filesystems - and voila! But now with all the disk swaps it really adds a lot of time to the restore. If I had a CD that I could boot without doing the disk swaps I would be good to go.

[Eric van Dijken]

You could try to put a working DS15 kernel on your "install" CD. Tried that once, worked until i got a DS15 with a different hardware configuration. Than it failed again. Which brought me back to the CD swaps to install the system.

Maybe 5.1b-3 will help, but haven't seen that one yet. (nor PK5 for 5.1B-2)

[Brandon Malli]

That is exactly what I have been trying to do. Can you recommend a CD burning utility (and/or procedure) that will allow me to copy the OS disk + add another file?

[Eric van Dijken]

Just put the files from the CD in a directory (call it "BUILD", for the example). Add the "ds15kernel" file.

Then run the following Tru64 command's:

# cd BUILD
# mkisofs -D -R -d -o -b -quiet \
-p "your name" \
-P "your org." -V "V5.1Br2650_O1" \
-o ../TRU64DS15.iso .

# disklabel -w -t cdfs -f ../TRU64DS15.iso
# echo "\0\c" || dd bs=1024k conv=sync >> ../TRU64DS15.iso

Then i ftp/copy the file to a PC with a CD burner installed and burn the image to CD-R.

Put the cd into your DS15, and boot it using:
P>>> b -file ds15kernel dqa0

[Brandon Malli]

Awesome thanks a lot - I was missing the disklabel part!

[Brandon Malli]

Everything is working great now. One tip I have is to copy the genvmunix kernel from a known good DS15 as well. We have 3 different DS15 based platforms here and I can boot off of CD with genvmunix on all of them.

Thanks again for everything.

[bourdages Arline]

DS15 server with tru64 51B: I did copy my tru64 51b CD and my NHD7 CD on my WORK directory. I did follow the recommandation of Eric van Dijken and it does work. But I like to be certain that the ds15kernel file is ok: Which file should be use for the DS15kernel. Should I use /540/vmunix or /540/genvmunix. ( from NHD7 CD). I did use the vmunix. Is that OK
Thanks and regards.
Arline.