hi again,
i posted a question a month a go, asking for advices on installing a
du40e from scratch. I had many answers at once.
Posting the summary was a mistake cause i didn't check things out first.
I am sorry for that. So with this msg i will try to fix my mistake.
Some info about the mashine:
Apr 1 10:19:44 alpha vmunix: LK401 keyboard, language English (American)
Apr 1 10:19:44 alpha vmunix:
Apr 1 10:19:45 alpha vmunix: Alpha boot: available memory from 0x698000 to 0x4000000
Apr 1 10:19:45 alpha vmunix: DEC OSF/1 V3.2 (Rev. 214); Wed Feb 3 10:54:05 EET 1999
Apr 1 10:19:45 alpha vmunix: physical memory = 64.00 megabytes.
Apr 1 10:19:45 alpha vmunix: available memory = 54.92 megabytes.
Apr 1 10:19:45 alpha vmunix: using 238 buffers containing 1.85 megabytes of memory
Apr 1 10:19:45 alpha vmunix: tc0 at nexus
Apr 1 10:19:45 alpha vmunix: scc0 at tc0 slot 7
Apr 1 10:19:45 alpha vmunix: tcds0 at tc0 slot 6
Apr 1 10:19:45 alpha vmunix: scsi0 at tcds0 slot 0
Apr 1 10:19:45 alpha vmunix: rz2 at scsi0 bus 0 target 2 lun 0 (DEC RZ26L(C) DEC 440C)
Apr 1 10:19:45 alpha vmunix: rz3 at scsi0 bus 0 target 3 lun 0 (DEC RZ26(C) DEC T392)
Apr 1 10:19:45 alpha vmunix: rz4 at scsi0 bus 0 target 4 lun 0 (DEC RRD42(C) DEC 4.5d)
Apr 1 10:19:45 alpha vmunix: scsi1 at tcds0 slot 1
Apr 1 10:19:45 alpha vmunix: rz9 at scsi1 bus 1 target 1 lun 0 (DEC RRD43(C) DEC 1084)
Apr 1 10:19:45 alpha vmunix: tz10 at scsi1 bus 1 target 2 lun 0 (DEC TLZ07(C)DEC 4BE0)
Apr 1 10:19:45 alpha vmunix: rz11 at scsi1 bus 1 target 3 lun 0 (DEC RZ29L-AA(C) DEC LYJ0)
Apr 1 10:19:46 alpha vmunix: bba0 at tc0 slot 7
Apr 1 10:19:46 alpha vmunix: ln0: DEC LANCE Module Name: PMAD-BA
Apr 1 10:19:46 alpha vmunix: ln0 at tc0 slot 7
Apr 1 10:19:46 alpha vmunix: ln0: DEC LANCE Ethernet Interface, hardware address: xx
Apr 1 10:19:46 alpha vmunix: fb0 at tc0 slot 0
Apr 1 10:19:46 alpha vmunix: 1280X1024
Apr 1 10:19:46 alpha vmunix: DEC3000 - M400 system
Apr 1 10:19:46 alpha vmunix: Firmware revision: 6.0
Apr 1 10:19:46 alpha vmunix: PALcode: OSF version 1.35
Apr 1 10:19:46 alpha vmunix: lvm0: configured.
Apr 1 10:19:46 alpha vmunix: lvm1: configured.
Apr 1 10:19:46 alpha vmunix: dli: configured
Apr 1 10:19:46 alpha vmunix: SuperLAT. Copyright 1993 Meridian Technology Corp. All rights reserved.
I would like to point out some things.
The case was to full install du40es on a new hdd using ufs.
The old system was running OSF1 V3.2 214 on alpha on different disk.
The riskier thing is to update the firmaware. There is no firmaware backup
utility as someone said. We called DIGITAL (Greece) on phone and said to
us that there is no way back to the old firmware once we make the update!!
Dr. Blinn has a different opinion about reverting the firmware. So this is
still the dark side. I dont know what is true. And we did not update the
firmaware YET.
tpb_at_doctor.zk3.dec.com {
Updating the console firmware is somewhat riskier than updating the
system software. If something goes wrong during a firmware update (for
instance, if the power fails), you might have to have the system's
motherboard swapped to get the system working again.
As long as the power doesn't fail, and you've got the firmware CDROM for
the older version (which probably came in the original media kit for
your older system software), then you should be able to revert the
firmware by loading it from the CDROM. However, there is no way to
backup the firmware from the current system and then restore it later.
You can only reinstall directly from a firmware update media. (On some
systems, there is a way to copy the firmware update software onto a
floppy, but as far as I know, no system has the ability to create a
firmware update floppy from the running firmware; it
would be a nice feature to have, but it's just not there in the
firmware.)
}
The sure thing is to install the du40e using the old firmware. The books
say that the minimum is revision 6.9 for firmware update. I can say only
that the new du40e has been installed and is working for 2 weeks on top of
firmware rivision 6. So this way is a sure bet.
tpb_at_doctor.zk3.dec.com {
You can test whether your new system software can boot and run on top of
the older firmware relatively easily, especially since you don't need to
use the existing system disk for the new software. Just try doing the
installation without updating the firmware. If everything seems to work
OK, then you can probably run on the older firmware for some time.
There are some features of the newer system software that depend on
features of newer firmware; such as the ability to do an "unattended
installation" -- but you don't need most of those new features. Unless
you have devices that have firmware loaded by the console firmware, and
those devices are incompatible with the new UNIX kernel unless you
update the console, you'll probably be OK. Without knowing more than I
want to know about your system, and doing a lot of research, I can not
tell you whether that is the case.
If you can install on the old firmware, then going back to the old
system disk and running the old kernel will not be a problem.
My point is simply this: If you are highly dependent on this system
running all the time, and you don't want a disruption from the update,
then you need to focus on getting the system running the new release
reliably. Because you are SO far out of date, there is no simple way to
assure that, on the single system hardware you've got, you'll be able to
just reboot the old system disk.
It MIGHT work OK, but it might not. It does sound like your greatest
risk of problems in going back (by rebooting the old system disk) will
come if you do the firmware upgrade -- so you might want to try
installing the new software
}
alan_at_nabeth.cxo.dec.com {
The CPU and I/O option firmware is an independent component
of the data on disk. Of course you can backup and restore
your on-disk data. The good choices are dump/restore or
vdump/vrestore. Tar and cpio are preferred by some people
though I don't know why. These latter two are archiving
utilities, which has slightly different requires from
backup.
The utility that doesn't exist is one to "backup" firmware.
If you have the older firmware update CDROM and the new
firmware CDROM, you may be able to switch back and forth,
if necessary, by upgrading and downgrading as nececessary.
But even that may not work well. Some very old versions
CPU firmware can't be upgraded directly. And there may
other problems similar to the one with the KZPSA that I
mentioned.
}
We will update the firmware once we wont need the older version of os.
I hope this summary will be helpfull.
Thanks for listening.
Received on Thu Apr 01 1999 - 09:27:19 NZST