C3600 Boot process question

[jamesps]

I have a C3600 workstation. It has 2 SCSI disk slots in the front labeled SCSI ID 5 and 6.

I have installed HP-UX 11.11 on a disk in slot SCSI ID 5. Everything works great no problems.

I have only this disk and I moved it out of the slot ID 5 and inserted it in the other slot with SCSI ID 6. Now the system will not boot anymore. If I enter the boot console handler and tell it to manually boot from FWSCSI.6.0 the ISL starts normally, it tells me that it executes hpux then reads the disk trying to load /stand/vmunix... and I get a lot of errors and finally the machine restarts. If I move the disk back to the SCSI ID 5, everything works fine.

Can anybody tell me why is this happening and what do I need to change in my HP-UX installation in order to make it boot when the disk is in the other slot. Is the installation "tied up" to the SCSI parameters? I am still a newbie on HP-UX and thank you anticipately for clearing this to me.

Thanks!
James

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

One of the setup steps for HP-UX when done manually is to set the boot path.

By moving the disk, the system's ROM, PDA does not know where the boot disk is. You need to set the boot path to the disks new location.

setboot
setboot -a 52.1.0 # second disk

Just need the actual address of the disk you want to boot from.

SEP

[Pete Randall]

James,

In a nutshell, when it starts to load, it reads that it should be working on SCSI ID 5 and tries to continue from there, where there is now nothing. You can't do this.


Pete

[jamesps]

I have entered the boot console handler and told it there to go and boot using the correct slot but then I had those errors.

setboot seems to do exactly what I have done in BCH with "boot fwscsi.6.0".

It seems to be that it is something in the OS itself. The OS starts to load but I get a message "cannot initialize vg...." or something similar. Everything works fine when I move it back to the original slot where the OS was installed on.

Thanks for your replies!

[Pete Randall]

Exactly! It expects it to be at SCSI ID 5 and there's nothing there.


Pete

[jamesps]

Maybe I was not clear. I passed the right parameter for the SCSI ID and the system still will not boot. It seems like it starts to boot and then it gives me the errors.
That is why I wonder if there is antyhing else in the /stand/vmunix or anywhere else which needs to be modified.

Thanks!
James

[Patrick Wallek]

Absolutely there is.

At a minimum you would need to go into LVM maintenance mode and export and re-import VG00. The reason is that when the volume group was built, it was built on the disk with the device file /dev/dsk/c0t5d0 (or something very similar). Now when you move the disk to the slot with SCSI ID 6, that disk device is now /dev/dsk/c0t6d0. When the kernel tries to activate the volume group, it can't because c0t5d0 is not there any more.

Why are you moving the disk from ID 5 to ID 6 anyway? What exactly are you trying to accomplish (other than causing problems for yourself)?

[Steven E. Protter]

So you've run setboot and still have a problem.

At the console/keyboard

Boot the box, interupt the boot process.

sea


What disk devices are are reported?

If none, you have a cabling or power issue, shut down and correct.

If you have a random access device listed as say P0

Bo P0

N Don't interact.

If this fails try another random access device until you get the system to boot.

SEP

[Pete Randall]

Patrick has hit the nail on the proverbial head. If nothing else gets you, the LVM header information certainly will.


Pete

[jamesps]

Patrick,

There are no 11 points unfortunately but they would certainly go to you. That seems to be the cause. It simply cannot initialize /dev/vg00 because it is not there.

I just ran into this situation and wanted to find out the cause. I am sure it will be useful later on.

Thanks much for all your replies!

James.