[Info-vax] satellite one hour ahead

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <nup4s6$n9g$1 at dont-email.me>, David Froble
<davef at tsoft-inc.com> writes: 

> Phillip, several of us have more than once suggested that you should
> just do a new V8.4 build and try it.  You seem to indicate that you have
> extra disks. This one simple test, and doing a fresh install of VMS is
> rather easy, regardless of what one curmudgeon seems to claim, and would
> be far easier than all the time you've wasted trying to "fix" something
> where you don't even know what's wrong or what to fix. 

I have a cluster with three bootservers, each with its own system disk, 
and a satellite which boots off of one of the disks.  All machines have 
a graphics monitor and a VT as the serial console.  I upgraded one of 
the bootservers to 8.4 and DECwindows stopped working in that the CDE 
login doesn't come up.  It gets as far as the grey screen then stops.  
Thus, there is apparently some problem with my 8.4 (which is the 
hobbyist image).  Thus, I don't want to upgrade to 8.4 for fear of 
losing DECwindows/CDE.

Could I reconfigure the satellite to boot off of the 8.4 node and see 
whether the time problem, or the DECwindows problem, is there?  Sure.
Is it worth the trouble?  Maybe if I had more time.  Could I upgrade the 
bootserver to 8.4 and see which, if any, of the problems is then 
present?  Same thing.

> You haven't yet demonstrated that there is actually a problem in VMS
> V8.4, which should be your first step. 

8.4?  The system with the wrong time is booting from a 7.3-2 disk.

I've done upgrades several times, and the upgrade to 8.4 was 
straightforward.  Then DECwindows/CDE stopped working.  So, it's pretty 
clear that there is a problem there somewhere.  Have I found it?  Not 
yet.  It might be that the problem doesn't always occur.  In particular, 
it might not occur after a fresh install.

> Why ask for advice and help if you're going to ignore any you don't
> like? 

Life is short.  I'm not ignoring anything and whether I like it is 
beside the point.  As always, one has to decide whether a detailed 
investigation is worth my time.  If someone suggests a simple check, or 
has found the same problem and knows how to fix it, fine.  If it's more 
trouble than it's worth, then I don't have the time.  But I can't know 
whether someone else has an idea if I don't ask.

Yes, a fresh install is easy.  Really easy.  Perhaps easier than an
upgrade.  But it does NOT result in my current system disk but just at
8.4.  It's not only a matter of layered products, but of site- and
node-specific setup over the years.  A lot of effort has gone into 
moving stuff off the system disk if it is common to other stuff in the 
cluster.

A desirable goal would be to have some directories on the system disk 
where one should not change anything, ever.  Others can be customizable.
There could be an intermediate installation which would overwrite the 
first but not the second (but copy the stuff somewhere so that one could 
see what has changed in the templates and reconsolidate any changes).  
But that is a big job.  It's not just the logical names mentioned in 
SYLOGICALS.TEMPLATE; there is more as well.  TCPIP is a mess here.