[Info-vax] LAVC, AlphaStation255 & Cisco Switch

[Christoph Gartmann]

Hello,

the problem is solved. Further investigations showed a somewhat strange
behaviour. When we set everything to "auto", that is, on the console, on the
switch and in LANCP the node is booting successfully. But it takes a very long
time. At least six times the network interface is shut down and opened up
again. The last down/up cycle is the culprit where the crash occurs when
everything is set to fixed values (speed, duplex, media). The final solution
is to set the switch to fixed values as well as the console but LANCP to
autonegotiate. Then booting is fast up to the ciritical point (everything is
fixed, nothing to negotiate). At the critical point (just at the beginning of
SYS$SYSTEM:STARTUP.COM) VMS disables the interface and reenables it for
autonegotiation. But this time it expects the outage and thus continues after
a short delay. Whereas when everything is set to fixed values it disables the
interface and notices a cluster disconnect before the interface is up again.
This seems a software bug. Either there are fixed values, then there is no need
to close/open the interface or there is autonegotiation which requires
close/open. In fact OpenVMS is closing/opening the interface even if set to
fixed values and is "surprised" by the disconnect.

Regards,
   Christoph Gartmann

-- 
 Max-Planck-Institut fuer      Phone   : +49-761-5108-464   Fax: -80464
 Immunbiologie
 Postfach 1169                 Internet: gartmann at immunbio dot mpg dot de
 D-79011  Freiburg, Germany
               http://www.immunbio.mpg.de/home/menue.html