custom install tape

[Jun Zhang_4]

My Ignite server (A400, J5000) has PA8500 processor, tapes generated from this server will not work on a E35.
Is the above statement true, or false?
I tried and failed, and I know some other people tried and failed, too. Nobody give an official TRUE answer yet, though.
The error message when booting the tape is that the booting procedure looks for INSTALLFS(the only name an E35 seems to know about), and failed to find. I guess what in the tape must be something like VINSTALLFS or WINSTALLFS.
The reasons I'm still hoping for a FALSE answer are,
1) One can ignite over the network an E35 from a J5000. One of the step is "Download a mini system". If this mini system is the XINSTALLFS, why it couldn't be in a custom install tape?
2) XINSTALLFS (X=NULL,V,W) are all present under /opt/ignite/boot of an Ignite server.

Jun Z

[Patrick Wallek]

I would not want to try installing an E35 with a tape from an A400 or J5000. They are RADICALLY different architectures. You do have the PA7XXX vs. PA8XXX CPU version to deal with, PLUS you have to worry about 32-bit only with the E35 vs. 64-bit with the A400 and J5000.

The E35 will look for INSTALLFS on the tape since that is the 32-bit version. If the tape is generated from a 64-bit machine, then it will have WINSTALLFS which will not work on the 32-bit.

If you really must use an E35, I would install from scratch from CD.

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi,

E35 supports only 32bit OS. I believe the OS that you have on A400 or J5000 is 11.x 64bit.

You could probably interact with ISL and manually specify WINSTALLFS as boot but it is not going to work.

-Sri

[Bill Hassell]

Just to second the reasons given: the E35 has NOTHING in common with the new hardware. Ignote/UX is designed to restore loss of a boot disk and to create golden images for cloning multiple systems. But the drivers for the disk, LAN and backplane architecture in the A400 and J5000 simply will not work with the E35 (or E25 E45 or any of the Nova family like the F/G/H/I series or the Emerald class such as the 860/870 and so on). And the drivers needed for the E35 hardware do not exist on the A400 or J5000. Now, they could be added to the kernel, but then you need to change boot loader (install code) to match the old architecture.

On other words, it won't work (which is different than unsupported). Create your E35 Ignite/UX tape on the E35 and it will work fine.

[Ravi_8]

Hi,

Since E35 uses PA7000 family PARISC processor and your ignite server (j5000) uses PA8000 family RISC processors, they are incompatible, hence the ignite fails.
Ignite has to performed on h/w compatible machines.

[Jun Zhang_4]

Everyboday is right, but nobody seems to attack my two reasons, which may have naively inferred that all the obstacles hindering a tape made at a J5000 from working at an E35 should apply to the network installation using Ignite, but actually not (Installation of an E35 from a J5000 Ignite server over the network works perfectly).


Jun Z