Console Debug (maybe) Eh?

[Zeni B. Schleter]

Background: Have a AlphaServer 4100 at Openvms v7.1-2. Had a crash due to System fan failure.

The console was left in an odd state. No prompt but it accepted commands that allowed me to look at registers and/or sections of memory. I could find no "ctrl" anything that would work to get to the POO>>> level. I gave up and recycled the power.

I have seen this before but rarely. I think I came across how to exit nicely but have not been able to find any reference with google.

As close as I could get was a Delta/Xdelta Debugger Manual. If this was XDelta, the only way to exit according to the manual was to "reboot without it".

The "Eh?" in the subject line is its only comment when you type a command that it didn't understand. It also appeared that only two character commands were allowed.

I would appreciate knowing what software had control of the console. If anyone knows of a way to exit and initiate a reboot without recycling the power, that would be helpful.

TIA

[Ian Miller. · Accepted solution]

If it was XDELTA (which does have that message) then ;C would crash VMS

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

http://www.itec.suny.edu/scsys/vms/OVMSDOC073/V73/6629/6629pro_011.html#8600_boot_xdelta

What bootflag did you specify ?

Wim (never tried those flag > 1)

[Zeni B. Schleter]

I have marked the ;C page of the Delta/XDelta manual. I hope I will remember the next time , if ever, it occurs.

Wim, I did not intentionally do anything to put the system into the state that it was in. There was a crash off hours. The system is currently non-production so it was left alone until I started investigating. But thanks for the pointer.

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Then why did it start the xdelta ?
My 4100's never did that.

Wim

[Zeni B. Schleter]

This has happened before but it has been years. I wish I had made a hardcopy of the text on the console as I found it. Not very informative at the time but would have been helpful now. A part of the text referred to "console" and "error" and "script" and I am guessing that it exited to a breakpoint.

Sorry.

[Ian Miller.]

If it was a breakpoint then ;P may have proceeded.

Your bootflags must request xdelta to be included.

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

That's how I understand it : no XDELTA without explicitly asking it via boot flags (e.g. 0,2).
Next time check how the system was booted. May be someone did it by accident.

Wim

[Zeni B. Schleter]

The only boot flags that I have used are 0,0 and 0,1 . The auto_action is set for RESTART and the boot_osflags is 0,0 .

Could the machine check put the system into xdelta? But from what you are saying, Xdelta should never have been loaded... So is this not an XDelta situation?

Sounds like I did not keep enough information to resolve this issue. But thanks for the insight and should this occur again, maybe I will remember this conversation.

[Jur van der Burg]

You don't need to boot VMS with Xdelta to get the Eh? message. There's also an Xdelta version embedded in the console, and I think that's what you've seen. It's not uncommon to get there on a harware issue. No VMS involved in this.

Jur.

[Zeni B. Schleter]

Thanks for the last note from JUR. For some reason , I was not given the option for assigning points. I will tomorrow and close the thread.

[Zeni B. Schleter]

Thanks for the input. Hope I remember enough of this thread should the situation arise again.
- Zeni