System crashed, unable to boot now!

[Tarek]

Hi all,
yesterday there had been a power crash and after that my ws (Visualize J5600 with hpux11) isn't able to boot. I'm having this error:
Attempting to boot Primary Path....
Attempt boot failed, continuing search
and then it stop.
So i try to boot in single user, so i stop booting. Then search, boot p0, interact with ipl? yes. IPL> hpux -is
and i have this error:
Booting...
ENTRY_INIT failed, status = -4 Unrecoverable hardware error
0x0000 ffffffffc 00000001 00000000 00000000
and so on to 0x0070
Failed to initialize
On the display of the ws i have:
WRN 80F5: EXTIO
Iodc exec error
What can I do now? Does anyone encountered this error before?
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Tarek

[Christopher Caldwell]

Looks like it's not finding the boot disk (hardware problem).

Call HP and get out your backup tapes.

[Mark Vollmers]

Tarek-

I assume that there is not a secondary boot device (like a second mirrored drive). I havn't seen that error, but it sounds like you're screwed. Never a good sign when you can't get to single user mode. Maybe the drive got fried. I'd give HP a call and see if they can do some voodoo on the hardware. Hopefully you don't have anything on it that isn't backed up. On a side note, this is a good case for an UPS, although it's a little late to help now :(

Mark

[Rainer von Bongartz]

I've seen something like this before.

There is a slight chance that you might get out of this if you check your SCSI cables.
I once had a loose cable and encountered a very similar error.

Regards
Rainer

[Tarek]

Christopher, i also thought that it can't see the harddisk, but when i do search it see harddisk and also the Cdrom.

[Christopher Caldwell]

It may be that the area of the disk that holds the boot program is hosed up, thus IPL sees that a SCSI device is available, but it can't actually read/load the boot code from this device.

Check your cables - if all is well, call HP.

Given that device can be seen, there's a chance that things can be recovered.

You can also try booting from an alternate device (tape drive, etc.) then you may be able to take a peek at the drive.

[Vincent Farrugia]

Hello,

Try to boot from backup kernel:

from ISL

hpux (device path)/stand/vmunix.prev

HTH,
Vince

[Sachin Patel]

Vince, he will not be able to do that because system is not even find disk.
Tarak unplug and plug back disk cables as other says it might be loose. This thing happens if disk is not spinning, get the disk out shake it little put it back It might work. I did that with old 735 system disk once.

Sachin

[Stefan Saliba]

If you boot using the HP-UX install CD there is an option to run a Recovery Shell. This will boot a mini kernel from the CD and there is an option to chroot to an lvm root disk. there are also options to recover the bootlif area is this is corrupt

when chrooting you should be able to see the data on the harddisk. Instructions how to chroot the root disk are on the Support Media Main menu. This is automatically brought up when you run the recovery shell.

Good luck
stefan

[Stefan Saliba]

One last thing tarek. it is good to keep an ignite tape. In cases like these you just boot from tape and in an hour's time your back in business. (Always if your HD has not failed in which case it will have to be changed).

Ignite is free to download. Good things are free!!!!

good luck stefan

[Tarek]

Thanks all for your response.
I've called HP, it's a hardware problem, harddisk to change. However thanks for your help.
Regards
Tarek

[Stefan Saliba]

Yeah well ,, changing the HD will surely solve the problem. What we tried to do is try and make your system work , and maybe save some data. starting from scratch will surely solve everything.

if you have a problem with the car engine , and you change the engine you surely solve the problem.

If you do not have backups , ask HP to chroot to the LVM disk maybe you can get somthing. they should know how to do it ....

Given that you can see the HD when you do a search means that not all hope is lost. Do not throw away the HD. hook it up to the system, with the new one, it may work for you again,,,



Good luck
stefan

[Tarek]

Thanks Stefan. I have the backup of the data logical volume. The user asked me to retrieve also data from the /tmp. I will of course follow your tips for recovering tmp.
Thanks again.
Tarek