Mystery drive keep showing up after reboot

[Jorge Cocomess]

Greetings,

I have this drive dka300 labeled as disk19 keep on mounting after a reboot even though I had replaced with a new drive dga19 labeled as disk19 in SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM. I had search the entire SYSTARTUP_VMS.COM and for the old dka300 and find nothing for it. So, when the old drive mounted first, which caused a conflict with the label name.

Where else can this mystery drive hidden and why can't I find it??

Version VMS 7.3-2 on ES45 server.

Please help!! I am going nuts trying to find this dka300 disk device.

Thank you in advance.

Jorge

[Hakan Zanderau ( Anders · Accepted solution]

Jorge,

You can log the entire boot by setting the sysgen-parameter STARTUP_P2 = "VDC"

$ MC SYSMAN STARTUP SET OPTION/VERIFY/OUTPUT=FILE/CHECKPOINTING

The next boot will create the logfile SYS$SYSTEM:STARTUP.LOG

Then you can search the logfile for the MOUNT-command.

regards,

Hakan Zanderau
HA-solutions

[Vladimir Fabecic]

> Where else can this mystery drive hidden and why can't I find it??

Maybe in some other command procedure.
What does
$ sea *.com dka300
say?

[Uwe Zessin]

It is not unusual to do some MOUNTs in SYCONFIG or SYLOGICALS, or the MOUNT happens in a completely different procedure that is called from SYSTARTUP_VMS.

Have you watched the system boot sequence to look at what time the mount happens?

If nothing helps, you need to search through all disks, e.g.
$ search sys$sysdevice:[000000...]*.com; dka300

[Jan van den Ende]

Jorge,

Uwe wrote
>>>
If nothing helps, you need to search through all disks, e.g.
$ search sys$sysdevice:[000000...]*.com; dka300
<<<
... and if you need to go there, then you should also look for any DEFINE of a name for DKA300.
You just MIGHT have to repeat the search sequence for any such name.
I HAVE been to a site that had about a dozen names defined for some of the disks, which then were used in, eh, "rather creative" ways.

Just in case...

Prooost.

Have one on me.

jpe

[GuentherF]

Jorge,

guessing what you have. You do a "SHOW DEVICE" and a DKA300 is listed as mounted (system?) with a label of DISK19. But you think there should be no DKA300 on your SCSI bus?

Then you see a new DGA19 mounted (system?) with a label of DISK19? So this is a Fibre Channel connected disk? And DKA300 and DGA19 are both mounted and have the same label?

Is this node in a cluster? Or standalone?

/Guenther

[GuentherF]

Jorge,

guessing what you have. You do a "SHOW DEVICE" and a DKA300 is listed as mounted (system?) with a label of DISK19. But you think there should be no DKA300 on your SCSI bus?

Then you see a new DGA19 mounted (system?) with a label of DISK19? So this is a Fibre Channel connected disk? And DKA300 and DGA19 are both mounted and have the same label?

Is this node in a cluster? Or standalone? Are there other disks on this node's SCSI bus?

/Guenther

[The Brit]

Jorge,
Is it possible that the dka300 drive once held pagefiles or swapfiles?

If so, the mount might have been included in SYS$SPECIFIC:[SYSMGR]SYPAGSWPFILES.COM, which executes before the startup gets to SYSTARTUP_VMS. This allows page and swapfiles to be installed very early in the startup procedure, particularly if they are not on the system disk.

Dave.

[Jorge Cocomess]

I've searched the entire system drive and I could not come up with the drive.

I will continue to look through the pagefile com procedure and "define" procedures if I can find it.

Thanks you all for great suggestions.

Oh by the way, this is a standalone server.

Thank you!!

Jorge

[Guenther Froehlin]

C'mon Jorge, tell us more details. Is it that you see a DKA300 from the SHOW DEVICE or, is it you see a (failed) MOUNT of that device during the boot?

/Guenther

[Jorge Cocomess]

Guenther,

This device mounted after the server was rebooted. This device was removed from syslogicals.com file and replaced with a mirrored_set $1$dga19 labeled disk19 instead.

I've searched and purged all the syslogicals.com or any files that had the old mount command.

The funny thing is, the old dka300 device get mounted first, therefore, the new disk19 can't be mounted because of the same name label.

Jorge

[Martin Hughes]

A couple of things I would check;

1. SYSMAN startups;

$ MC SYSMAN STARTUP SHOW FILE

2. Make sure you don't have an older version of a startup procedure (SYSTARTUP_VMS or SYLOGICALS etc) lurking in SYS$SPECIFIC.

3. Is it possible that there is a data-file used to specify disks, labels etc for the mounting process?. This would explain why the DKA300 string is not found in your command procedure search.

[Steven Schweda]

If the disk is mounted /SYSTEM (or /CLUSTER),
I'd search for the label (which must be
specified in the MOUNT command) rather than
the device name (which could be almost
anything).

And, for starters, rather than try to guess a
likely place, I'd search
sys$sysdevice:[000000...]*.com. If that
failed, I might try the same on other disks.
Then I might try *.*. (What else does the
system have to do?)

If I got more desperate, I'd start looking
for MOUNT commands.

If I got _really_ desperate, I might try
unplugging the disk drive and waiting for the
mount failure.

[Joseph Huber_1]

Finally, does SHOW MEMORY/FILES list the disk for using page/swap files ?

A search through all command-files should have found it...
Usually (secondary-)page/swap files/disks are mounted in sys$system:sypagswap or satellite_page.com .

[Steven Schweda]

> A search through all command-files should
> have found it...

Not around here. I have a disk-mounting
procedure which reads a data file,
SYS$MANAGER:LOCAL_DISKS.DAT. For example:

! 7 September 2005. SMS.
!
! ALP's Local Disks (as seen from ALP$DKA0:).
!
! Format: CODE DEVICE LABEL
!
! Code: N: non-system disk, R: read-only non-system disk, S: system disk.
! LABEL = "*" for any label on non-system disks.
! For the best messages, place the system disk last.
!

! N DKA200: ALP_SCSI_2

N DKA100: UTIL5ALPX

N DKB400: VMS073ALPX

N DKB300: TEST

S DKA0: VMS073ALP

! r dka500: *
! r dka400: *
R DKA600: *

[The CD-ROM drive keeps migrating around.]

Other cluster members can DECnet in when they
start up, read the same file, and mount this
system's disks, too. The scheme works pretty
well, but you could look at every .COM file
in the room and still not find these data.

[Kelly Stewart_1]

And of course it's possible that there are command files that aren't named ".com". For instance we use custom command file types in our startup mechanism, just where a rouge MOUNT command might be.

Kelly

[MarkOfAus]

Jorge,

How about a listing of show dev/full $1$dga19 and show dev/full dka300?

Regards
Mark

[John Gillings]

Jorge,
Brute force approach. Assuming there is a physical device DKA300... If it's in a storage shelf, just remove it! If it's an internal drive and you don't want to open the case to unplug or remove it, then change the volume name:

$ SET VOLUME/LABEL=NOTDISK19 DKA300
$ DISMOUNT/CLUSTER DKA300

Next reboot even if you haven't found the MOUNT command, mounting that disk will fail because the volume labels no longer match.