Boot to DVD w/Networking

[BoyeDav]

HP will be coming on site this weekend to replace the PCI backplane and disk controller (upgrading to the P400 SmartArray controller w/PCI-E backplane). We don't expect the new controller to recognize the array configuration on our existing disks, so we expect to have to re-create the array and volumes under the new controller, which will be destructive.

We have an rx3600, running OpenVMS 8.3.

I'm comfortable with the various backup/restore options. However, we do not have a tape device. We do backups to disk, gzip the savesets, then FTP them to another system we're they're picked up for tape backup.

If I boot to the OpenVMS OE DVD, how easy is it to get networking working? My plan would be to boot to the DVD after installing the new array controller, download our system saveset via FTP from our backup server, then restore the system from that backup.

Is there a documented process for getting TCPIP working when booting from the OpenVMS OE DVD?

[Hoff · Accepted solution]

If you have an external SCSI enclosure and some disks around somewhere (and assuming you have an external SCSI tap open on this rx3600), or if you can borrow or rent a DLT tape drive, I'd use that approach.

Or you could potentially use DNDRIVER and a USB disk drive. Big "dumb" USB drives are available for comparatively small change, after all -- anything up to 1 TB should work with OpenVMS. (Do check the USB DNDRIVER ECO level here.) Somebody probably has a couple of these around your site, and the corner computer shop should have a selection.

As for your question, yes, you can drop down to the $$$ prompt on the distro DVD and fire up TCP/IP using DHCP addressing (having tried it), but slogging any volume of data over the wire is, um, slow, and slogging critical data over FTP can be somewhat error-prone. What you can do is pretty limited. I'd be rather cautious here, particularly when you're in a production environment, as appears to be the case with a weekend hardware upgrade.

Stuff I'd look for: gzip classically slams BACKUP saveset attributes, so I'll assume you know how to recover those. Also, and only the most recent versions gzip allow larger savesets (see Freeware V8.0 www.hp.com/go/openvms/freeware/ for that. If you're not familiar with resetting the saveset attributes, read up on the set file /attr command or the freeware 000tools area reset tool discussed in the OpenVMS FAQ (www.hoffmanlabs.com/vmsfaq) zip and unzip (with "-V") are far better here, though you'll need to use the beta 3.0 and 6.0 pieces to get past 4 GB savesets. Or there's a split.com around, which would potentially allow you to reconstitute the saveset.

Me? I'd toss stuff onto external storage, and set that out of the way. And I'd ensure I had that capability around here in any case, so that I could recover this box in a hurry should something nasty sneeze on something important. I'd not depend on the $$$ and FTP path, personally.

Stephen Hoffman
HoffmanLabs LLC

[BoyeDav]

Thanks for the info. I've got LTO2 drives I could use, as well as USB hard drives. Plus I'm looking at buring a DVD from VMS too. Hopefully I'll have multiple options.

[Hoff]

Everything you ever wanted to know about writing CD and DVD media on OpenVMS, but were entirely and justifiably very afraid to ask: http://64.223.189.234/node/28

[The Brit]

Remember, burning a CD will not help much when you are already booted from the CD, unless you have two CD drives.

Dave

[BoyeDav]

I plugged in a USB hard drive, initialized it, and started copying files to it. It seems like this will be a workable option. However, in that I don't have another OpenVMS system with which to test things, I'm going to ensure I have multiple backups and multiple restore options.