Thanks to Tom B. for the precise solution and others with helpful
information.
I upgraded my firmware to 5.5 for Unix v5.0 and set the appropriate boot
flags.
[SOLUTION]
There is a problem with full installations on the AlphaPC 164/LX due to a
design feature of the LX (and the original AlphaPC 164) that interacts with
part of the Tru64 UNIX virtual memory management; the end result is that on
some systems and in some versions of Tru64 UNIX you reach a point where the
UNIX kernel asks the console firmware to save the console variables that it
has set, and the firmware tries to do it, but the system software changed
the settings of some of the I/O space mappings and that trips up the logic
in the console for writing the NVRAM (which is connected to the X utility
bus that's mapped in ISA space).
If you're trying to install V4.0F, you should be able just power cycle, set
the environment variables manual (you need bootdef_dev, boot_osflags, and
perhaps auto_action), then reboot. We fixed V4.0F to make sure that all
of the right stuff gets written to disk and sync-d. For V4.0E you may be
out of luck (but it's outmoded, use V4.0F). For V4.0D, you can use the "i"
flag in the initial boot and then when it prompts for the kernel name, say
vmunix memlimit=128
and it should work OK (we only saw this on the LX164 and only with large
memory, over 256M, so limiting the memory used by the kernel during the
initial install is a workaround).
Finally, there is a fix in the latest console firmware (5.6, you've got a
very old firmware) that has the console ignore the kernel's request and
just return without setting the variables. You will still need to set
them by hand, and you may need to power cycle the system before you will
be able to do it, but it doesn't hang with a black screen.
[PROBLEM]
> I am failing on a full [new] installation of Unix. The inital
> installation completes, drops to a blue screen, message "Setting Console
> Environment Variables" appears, 3-5 seconds later I am at a black screen,
> no disk access.
>
> LX164
> SRM 5.3-3
> SRM console variables set per docs:
> >>> set boot_file
>
> >>> set pci_parity off
> >>> init
>
> I have tried pci_parity off and on.
>
> The initial configuration file installs enough to boot into single user
> mode. I am not getting to the System Reboot Phase (p. 6-45). I can
> manually boot into single user mode. Is there another manual step that I
> must take to begin the Software Configuration Phase?
>
> Thanks in advance.
Received on Thu Mar 09 2000 - 19:51:34 NZDT