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Re: Jclass OS install issue

 
Norman Dignard
Regular Advisor

Jclass OS install issue

We have 3 j5600's. I installed 2 hosts without a problem. Did a full ignite of one and did an install on the 3rd box. Bootup, system reponse was dead slow. Did a fresh install on the box - same results. after digging in to find the problem, created a nsswitch.conf file (from nsswitch.files) which appeared to solve the response problem.

Why is this box behaving differently then the others? The other hosts don't have an nsswitch.conf file. Hardware config is the same as well as the OS install options.

I also noted that on this one host the lan cards are listed as lan0 and lan2 where as the others are lan0 and lan1. Note that only the onboard nic (lan0) is configured.
10 REPLIES 10
Pete Randall
Outstanding Contributor

Re: Jclass OS install issue

I must be a little slow this morning because I'm not following that. You've got 3, installed 2, Ignited one, and installed (cold install?) the third (what happened to #2?). One of these, lord only knows which one, was slow but adding a nsswitch.conf file seems to have fixed it, but it could be that the lan cards are different.

I think you need to go back and carefully categorize the conditions of each machine so we actually have something to go on other than "3 machines, one slow".


Pete

Pete
Steven E. Protter
Exalted Contributor

Re: Jclass OS install issue

Shalom,

HP-UX by default does not install an /etc/nsswitch.conf file.

There are a few candidates with other extensions.

swagentd and other services will not start properly until you have a proper nsswitch.conf file in place.

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Steven E Protter
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Norman Dignard
Regular Advisor

Re: Jclass OS install issue

Just to clarify - 3 j5600's, same hardware config, firmware. Did fresh OS installs on 2 of them. Took a full ignite of one of these hosts and used the ignite tape to do an install on the 3rd box. Thinking somethings bad on the ignite image (due to the noted problem), reinstalled the OS afresh. Same results.

On the good hosts, (no nsswitch.conf exists) and they are running fine. swagentd is running fine on the other boxes with no nsswitch.conf
Mel Burslan
Honored Contributor

Re: Jclass OS install issue

What you have told so far is pointing to a network related problem but without actually laying hands on this system and seeing how the additional NIC is imstalled physically, it is hard to guess where the problem is coming from.

lan2 designator instead of lan1, is somewhat of an indicative of a different card location (like a different slot) but can't be sure. You might have a bad slot on this server or a bad NIC.

When you said fresh install after a painfully slow operation after igniting 3rd box, I have a sneaking suspicion that it did not overwrite the existing (ignited) OS but went into a recovery mode and this is how you ended up with an nsswitch.conf file, leftover from the ignite installation. Otherwise, default installation of hpux from optical media, do not create one as noted above. And a bad nsswitch.conf can wreak havoc on your system with unbearably long boot times and any other network related operations. But it should be quite easy to fix by either renaming them to get them out of the way or putting in correct information in it by copying it from another server in the same subnet, which is working fine. Make sure, your /etc/resolv.conf is in a good standing along with nsswitch.conf.

If you are still having difficulty, please elaborate more and you'll get more answers
________________________________
UNIX because I majored in cryptology...
Norman Dignard
Regular Advisor

Re: Jclass OS install issue

I did swap out the nic but that made no difference. As for the igniting of the box - neither the ignite nor cold install created the file. I created it manually using HP's default nssswitch.files.
As for the reslove.conf - this was created during the install (both cold and from the ignite image). I even recreated it but that made no differnce.
Mel Burslan
Honored Contributor

Re: Jclass OS install issue

So, if I am understanding you correctly, you have 3 systems, let's call them sys1, sys2 and sys3. sys1 and sys2 are installed from optical media and working fine. sys3 is not working fine regardless which method (ignite or optical media installation) is used for installation.

If this is the right statement, could you please post the symptoms you are observing ? What are you doing on sys1 or sys2 that is working fine and not working on sys3 ? By means of 'working fine' I mean running at acceptable speeds vs not. If there are any other problems, please provide details on those as well.
________________________________
UNIX because I majored in cryptology...
Norman Dignard
Regular Advisor

Re: Jclass OS install issue

Mel - you are correct 2 systems cold installed with same config, all worked fine (note that no nssswitch.conf file exists on these boxes. The 3rd box (sys3) (prior to all of this) was up and running fine from a cold install similarily configured as sys1 & 2. We then shutdown the box for a few months until we tried to power it back up and noted the slow system response. As this box was being retasked, we did another cold install but the system behavior was the same, slow to log in (from console or via rlogin, telnet, Xwindows) ioscan would take forever. When doing trival cmds the system would sometimes hang or kill the session. Same results after doing an ignite from sys3 previous ignite image (before shutdown when it was working) or form a sys1 or 2 ignite.

Looking at the NIC, all was set ok (100FD same as on the switch), no errors in lanadmin. STM doesn't report anything.

After digging through the systems config, we manually created a a nssswitch.conf (copied from nsswitch.files) file and then the system started to behave.

That is what has me a little perplexed. I don't understand why this box would be any different then the others.

Mel Burslan
Honored Contributor

Re: Jclass OS install issue

Norman,

if all 3 servers are on the same network and none of them are configured to use NIS, all you need to do is to compare the nsswitch.conf and resolv.conf files to see why sys3 is behaving badly.

In the lack of an nsswitch.conf file, this default behaviour should be in effect for name resolution options:

hosts: dns [NOTFOUND=return] nis [NOTFOUND=return] files

are all 3 servers' resolv.conf files the same ?
________________________________
UNIX because I majored in cryptology...
Norman Dignard
Regular Advisor

Re: Jclass OS install issue

I managed to get to the root of the problem. It turns out that NAT 0 translation was not enabled on the switch for this host hense DNS resolution would fail. (Our domain controller is on another subnet). The ports on the other hosts were configured properly.

With the port properly configured, the problem went away. I even did another cold install and this time the box behaved normally even without a nsswitch.conf file.

Thanks for the inputs.