Booting from CD with a graphics console

[Chaim Budnick]

Perhaps what I am about to write is a well known issue. If, however, it can help even one system manager or support person, then the effort will have been worth while.

Last evening I went to one of our customers to do an annual full image backup of the system disk. The console there is a PC graphics terminal and NOT a VT.

I booted from the CD and the system refused to come up. It seemed to "hang" just after both CPUs were joined.

I tried a different CD - same reult.

At this point I had a suspicion that perhaps the graphics console was the problem. So we connected a VT320 to the serial connector. However, this did not immediately help, until I realized that I had to issue the follwing command at the boot prompt:

>>>set console serial

AND to do a "hard" restart of the ALPHA.

After the ALPHA came up again to boot prompt the system came up successfully from the CD.

Take note that if the PC console is to be reestablished then a

>>>set console graphics

MUST be issued, and the ALPHA hard restarted.

Hope this may be of help to someone!

Chaim

[Ian Miller.]

what sort of alpha?
I've done s/a backups of various alphas with graphics consoles with not a problem.

[faris_3]

Hi,

Which version of OpenVMS ?
You may need to install a GRAPHICS patch;

hth,
HF

[Chaim Budnick]

Ian,

Is there a command to issue to get this information?

The OpenVMS version is V7.3

Chaim

[Chaim Budnick]

The CD from which I booted is V7.3-1. (They didn't have the V7.3 CD).

[Chaim Budnick]

AlphaServer 1200 5/533 4MB

Chaim

[Duncan Morris]

Chaim,

I have seen similar problems on AS1200 and DS20 when a non-standard keyboard was attached. It appeared to hang until a CR was entered on the keyboard - then hey presto the system carried on booting.

[faris_3]

Ignore my previous reply ... I didn't see you were speaking of the CD boot.

Could be a firmware poblem. Can you post
a SDA> clue config ?

[Chaim Budnick]

Faris,

What exactly do you want from the CONFIG?

Console Vers V6.0-4

Chaim

[faris_3]

It is the latest firmware for this system.
SO it should be ok

[faris_3]

They are a number of restrictions in the
firmware release notes.
Have you checked restriction 3 ?



3.5 SRM Console Firmware Bugs and Restrictions

The following are known bugs and restrictions with
AlphaServer 1200 SRM console firmware version V6.0.

1 The FLASH HBA firmware update for KZPCC, under
the I20 DPT Utility, via floppy diskette is not
working. This will be fixed in a future release.

2 Configuring an HSD30 at a higher DSSI node ID than
that of the KFPSA will result in the SRM console
not seeing devices when a console SHOW DEVICE
command is issued.

3 VGAs configured as console display devices must be
in PCI0.

4 If running OpenVMS or DIGITAL UNIX, the MEMORY_TEST
environment variable must be set to FULL (default).
PARTIAL and NONE are not yet supported.

5 The system must be reset prior to running LFU
from console. Booting the LFU off CD-ROM does not
require a system reset.

[Ian Miller.]

parhaps you could post all of CLUE CONFIG

[Chaim Budnick]

Thanks to all for your assitance!

As long as I can "work-around" the immediate problem, we don't really need to resolve the actual problem.

I am certain that it is indeed a firmware problem etc., but the necessity of resolving the issue is not justified by the volume of times that the system must be rebooted from a CD (maybe once a year).

[Uwe Zessin]

I don't know what you mean by 'hard restart', but an INITIALIZE command after changing the CONSOLE variable so far has always been sufficient for me (the Alpha I was working with ;-).

[Chaim Budnick]

I mean, that I had to actually shut off the ALPHA via pushing the on/off button. The set console did NOT take affect until I actually turned off the ALPHA.

Chaim

[Antoniov. · Accepted solution]

Within old bios I met same trouble on DS10 some year ago.
I had to change SET CONSOLE twice.

Antonio Vigliotti

[Dave Higdon]

Thanks for posting..

I just had similar problem with our 1200 this weekend when attempting to boot the VMS CD in order to upgrade from 7.3 to 7.3-2.

I got the console prompt ok and was able to put in the boot-FL 0,0 DKA400 command and it did start to load, but stopped after setting affinity to primary cpu and Jumping to bootstrap messages.

I did the firmware upgrade, it still hung after the Jumping to bootstrap message.

I was using serial console from, have not tried the graphics console at all.

still at 7.3 :) for the moment.

[Dave Higdon]

My problem turned out to be the serial console
needs to be in COM1 instead of COM2.

So you need to ignore the Alpha 1200 user guide on this.

:)

Dave