Thanks to several people (see below) we fixed the memory problem at boot.
----> HERE THE PROBLEM:
``we installed the new Digital Unix 4.0E on two Alpha 600 5/266
machines, both with 1Gbyte of memory.
After a power-cycle we got the following message during boot:
panic (cpu 0): get_first_free:
no free memory!
DUMP: No primary swap, no explicit dumpdev,
nowhere to put header, giving up.
After several attempts with different memory configurations,
we found that both systems boot with a memory limit of 350 Mbyte or
less, that is with the vmunix option:
memlimit=350
On the contrary, if we try with:
vmunix memlimit=400 (or greater) we get the error message:
contig_malloc: not enough aligned node memory
pmr 0: 215 contiguous pages available
panic (cpu 0): contig_malloc of in-memory sg table failed
DUMP: ....
Boot process stops. ''
----> HERE THE CURE (thanks to B. Larelle):
at the console prompt:
>>> set os_type vms
>>> init
. . . wait the console prompt . . .
>>> boot
----> WHY IT WORKS (thanks to R.W. Franzen)
`` when the os_type is Unix, the full memory is not checked prior to
boot, and this causes failures on some systems....
telling the firmware that it will boot VMS causes all memory to
be checked, then booting (of Unix) begins from the disk. ''
----> The contig_malloc problem (thanks to M. Ray):
`` What you need to remember in Tru64 UNIX is that memory
settings have to be 8Mb aligned; that is all of your memory tunables
should be evenly divisible by eight. ''
----> THANKS (again) to:
Tom Blinn <tpb_at_doctor.zk3.dec.com>
Peter Reynolds <PReynolds_at_synstar.com>
Bryan Lavelle <Bryan.Lavelle_at_digital.com>
Mark Ray <Caprica7_at_aol.com>
Paul Thompson <paul.thompson_at_unitedhealth.org>
Richard W. Franzen <rfranzen_at_my-dejanews.com>
----> APPENDIX:
We received the solution from Bryan the same day of our need-for-help
message.
We followed his suggestions but they did not work.
Today Richard sent us the same suggestions and we tried again
succesfully !?!
The first time, probably, we made a mistake typing 'set os_type vms' !
Received on Thu Mar 25 1999 - 12:41:57 NZST