[Info-vax] page and swap files for satellites

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

Presumably, the best place for these is on a local disk, for performance 
reasons.  For this, one would use SATELLITE_PAGE.COM as created by 
CLUSTER_CONFIGURE*.COM.  However, rather than having none at all, is
there any reason not to set them up as for a bootnode, i.e. primary ones 
in SYS$SPECIFIC:[SYSEXE] and secondary ones elsewhere, specified in
SYPAGSWPFILES.COM?

On a related note, consider this snippet from 
SYS$COMMON:[SYS$STARTUP]VMS$DEVICE_STARTUP.COM:

$if f$search("sys$specific:[sysexe]satellite_page.com") .nes. "" then -
@sys$specific:[sysexe]satellite_page "''p1'" "''p2'" "''p3'" "''p4'" -
"''p5'" "''p6'" "''p7'" "''p8'" 
$if f$search("sys$manager:sypagswpfiles.com") .nes. "" then -
@sys$manager:sypagswpfiles "''p1'" "''p2'" "''p3'" "''p4'" "''p5'" -
"''p6'" "''p7'" "''p8'"

While it makes sense to look for satellite_page.com in
sys$SPECIFIC:[sysexe], what is the reason for looking for
sypagswpfiles.com in sys$manager, which would find vms$COMMON[sysmgr] if 
there is nothing in sys$SPECIFIC:[sysmgr].  Would this make any sense at 
all?  OK, one could branch in the code based on the node name or 
whatever, but one could do that in satellite_page.com as well.  Why the 
different strategy?  (I am assuming that a page or swap file can be used 
by only one node at a time.)

(Although I now use only SBB disks, for satellites I actually use, I
plan to use a two-member shadow set of internal disks for page and swap
files.  However, for testing machines out while booting them as a
(temporary) satellite, it would be nice to have some page and swap files 
elsewhere, just to speed things up, especially if there are no internal 
disks in the machine.  On a related note, is it possible/supported to 
change just the LAN address of a satellite and leave everything else 
intact?  Or does one have to create a new satellite (possibly deleting 
the old one)?  This would be handy for testing machines by booting them 
as a temporary satellite.)