[Info-vax] Weird problem with non-booting AlphaServer 800.

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Hans Vlems wrote 2013-01-08 08:59:
> On 7 jan, 17:49, Jan-Erik Soderholm <jan-erik.soderh... at telia.com>
> wrote:
>> Hi.
>>
>> We have an (old) AS800 that right know refuses to boot.
>>
>> This server has worked just fine until Saturday when I
>> (for different reasons) decided to reboot it (remotely).
>>
>> It never come back up and I also discovered that the
>> terminalserver setup to the console didn't work (should
>> have checked that first, of course, but... :-) ) That
>> was fixed today (Monday) so I do have consoel access now.
>>
>> The reason for the reboot was that I discovered that this
>> server was running with shadowing shut off. There are disk
>> in the box for shadowing but probably this was disabled
>> at some update a few years ago.
>>
>> I changed SHADOWING from "0" to "2" and SHADOW_SYS_DISK
>> from "0" to "1" and initiated a reboot.
>>
>> This is a "dev" box so there is noone else then me that
>> is missing the box, fortunately :-)
>>
>> Everyting looks just fine, but the boot sequence just hangs
>> after the "jumping to bootstrap code" line. If I boot using
>> the normal 0,0 flags, it returnes to the >>> prompt silently
>> after aprox a minute (after the "Jumping to..." message).
>> No errors or other messages. Everyting using SHOW at the
>> console looks OK.
>>
>> If I boot with 0,1 flags (conversational) it just hangs
>> indefinitely (until power cycled).
>>
>> The weird thing is that I get the same result if I try
>> to boot using another disk (former part of the system
>> shadow set, but has not been used for a couple of years).
>>
>> We will probably try to get a replacement AS800 on-site as
>> soon as possible together with a fresh bootable VMS disk.
>>
>> But I'd though that I'd ask anyway if someone might have seen
>> this kind of behaviour before? I would think that if something
>> in VMS itself was "wrong", it (VMS) would tell me so.
>>
>> And a conversationel boot would at least get me to the
>> "SYSBOOT>" prompt, not ? What on the system disk would
>> prevent the SYSBOOT> prompt from beeing displayed?
>> Well, apart from a missing VMS system on the disk. :-)
>>
>> Here is what a (conversational) boot attempt looks like :
>>
>>   >>>boot dka100 -flags 0,1
>> (boot dka100.1.0.5.0 -flags 0,1)
>> block 0 of dka100.1.0.5.0 is a valid boot block
>> reading 1168 blocks from dka100.1.0.5.0
>> bootstrap code read in
>> base = 1d6000, image_start = 0, image_bytes = 92000
>> initializing HWRPB at 2000
>> initializing page table at 7ffce000
>> initializing machine state
>> setting affinity to the primary CPU
>> jumping to bootstrap code
>>
>> [hanging indefinitley here...]
>>
>> Jan-Erik.
>
> What do you see on the console if you type >>>SHOW DEV ?
> That ought to show the available disks and controllers.
> Perhaps the controller is broken?
> Hans
>

Nothing weird or unexpected :

 >>>sh dev
dga1.1001.0.14.0           $1$DGA1                       HSG80  V86F
dka0.0.0.5.0               DKA0                       RZ1EF-CB  0371
dka100.1.0.5.0             DKA100                     RZ1EF-CB  0371
dka200.2.0.5.0             DKA200                     RZ2EA-LA  N1H1
dka300.3.0.5.0             DKA300                     RZ2EA-LA  N1H1
dka400.4.0.5.0             DKA400                        RRD47  1206
dva0.0.0.1000.0            DVA0
ewa0.0.0.11.0              EWA0              08-00-2B-C3-D7-5A
ewb0.0.0.12.0              EWB0              08-00-2B-C5-4A-18
pga0.0.0.14.0              PGA0        WWN 2000-0000-c92f-0f25
pka0.7.0.5.0               PKA0                  SCSI Bus ID 7  5.57
pkb0.7.0.13.0              PKB0                  SCSI Bus ID 7  5.57
 >>>

And the system worked just fine up until I initiated
a reboot...

Jan-Erik.