boot a standalone backup tape from hsj40

[Richard Hammersley_1]

I'm trying to boot a standalone backup tape that is on a tape drive attached to an hsj40. Computer is a VAX 6620 running vms 6.2.

On my alpha I can see disk and tape devices at the console prompt but not on the vax. Been awhile since I had to deal with a vax and hsj intimately.

The current default boot is

/r5:00000000 /XMI:B /BI:0 /NODE:00000603 DU25

The XMI B device is a CIXCD.

Can I boot a standalone backup tape from an hsj ?
If so, how do I figure out the values for the boot command ?

An aside, my hsj does not have a unit 25. How is the vax figuring out what to boot from ?

Thanks.

Richard Hammersley
Xavier University

[John Gillings]

Richard,

Please reserve booting from tape to be your absolute last ditch effort. Build a standalone backup kit on a disk or boot from CD. The time you save on a single boot will pay for the storage many times over.

[Arch_Muthiah]

Richard,
I am not sure whether can we boot from HSJ drive, but I found this from a web site.

Conversational Boot:

Most Current Alphas, VAX 7000:
>>> boot â fl x,1

VAX 6000
>>> BOOT boot_profile/R5=1
>>> BOOT boot_profile/R5=x0000001

Older small VAXes
>>> B/R5:1 or B/R5:x0000001


Archunan

[Richard Hammersley_1]

What I'm doing is moving the VAX 6000 elsewhere and out of a cluster and away from its disks and attaching some "new" disks to it and want to boot standalone and restore the original system disk to the new disks. It will not be in the original cluster and not on the ethernet so no cluster config group number conflict.

[Jan van den Ende]

Richard,

that is a workable plan, _IF_

your first boot is conversational, AND
you either set VAXCLUSTER to 0 ( read:zero) OR
you set EXPECTED_VOTES equal to VOTES.

If not, your system will hang in "Waiting to form or join a cluster"

Success.

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[Volker Halle]

Richard,

as far as I remember - and it's a long time ago - the unit number in the boot command needs to be specified in HEX.

If your system disk is DUA37, then my memory is right ;-) You can also specify the boot device unit number in R3 with /R3:25 - also in HEX.

And I bet that booting from a tape connected to the same pair of HSJs (CI nodes 3 and 6) - if you really want to do so - should work, if you specify the correct unit number. Try booting from MUx (where x is the HEX tape unit number).

Volker.

[Volker Halle]

Richard,

here is s pointer to the VAX 6000 Series Owner's Manual:

http://h18002.www1.hp.com/alphaserver/vax/download/ek-600eb-om-2.pdf

Looks like booting from a CI-connected tape is NOT supported. You need to boot from the console TK70 (see table 4-4).

Volker.

[Richard Hammersley_1]

And of course they bought this 6000 without a console tape drive.

Next course I guess is to make an image backup of the system disk onto another rz29 and put that disk into the 6000's hsj and boot from that. Most likely "min".

Thanks all.

Rh