[Info-vax] Installing OpenVMS 8.4 on Integrity rx2800 with no local disks

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-01-29 20:36:10 +0000, Tom Wade said:

> I have to install OpenVMS 8.4 on an Integrity rx2800 i2.  It has no 
> local disks, only SAN storage.  From what I can see, this system cannot 
> boot from the DVD due to lack of support for the SATA DVD drive in the 
> base O/S.
> 
> The article describing this,
> 
> http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=emr_na-c02962662&sp4ts.oid=5033573 
> 
> 
> states that "This issue has been elevated to OpenVMS Engineering 
> requesting OpenVMS 8.4 patch V0500 be released on CD, but as of yet it 
> has not happened."  Does anyone know if this is still the case ?  Is 
> there a HW version DVD release?

You'd need what used to be called a remastered installation kit.   
Those did get created <http://support.hp.com/ro-en/document/c03291087>, 
though not without issues. Check with HP for details.

> I have access to an rx2600 (currently running 8.3).  I was considering 
> using this machine to install 8.4 with patch UPDATE5 on a USB stick, 
> and trying to boot that on the target machine.  Is this feasible ?

Try connecting a USB DVD drive, load the DVD, and see if that'll boot.

Configure the rx2600 as an InfoServer host, configure and serve the 
V8.4 installation kit, and boot the rx2800 i2 via the network.  Having 
InfoServer around is handy in general.  
<http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/285>

If you have a scratch disk and/or some experience with using the LD 
software in creative ways, I'd probably create a V8,4 UPDATE 
{whatever's current} installer, and try serving that via InfoServer.

The USB flash drive boot path might or might not work — the success of 
that path was very dependent on details of the particular USB devices 
involved.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes not.  AFAIK, the details of 
that bootstrap path weren't ever resolved, nor did that become 
supported.   (But check with HP for the official answer.)  Worth a shot 
here of course, but it might not work.  Try a couple of different 
brands of flash media, if you want to try it.

Note that a block copy from optical to disk or disk to optical won't 
immediately boot.   The boot block offsets on the DVD and CD media are 
going to be 2048 byte sectors, where the boot block offsets on the 
flash and on the InfoServer-served drives are 512-byte sectors.  
This'll involve the SET BOOTBLOCK command.    
<http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/28> has more than a few details on 
the boot block handling.




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