[Info-vax] The Road to V9.0

[Jon Pinkley]

On Monday, July 8, 2019 at 5:12:50 PM UTC-4, clair... at vmssoftware.com wrote:
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> Here is an update toward "Real Boot".
> 
> Two major facets of the execution environment need to change. First, eliminate loading everything we need as execlets and putting it all in the memory disk, but rather create a system disk and find/activate images as they are needed. Second, boot from a system disk.
> 
> As you will see in upcoming webpage updates and also in a webinar, part one has been accomplished. We have a little tidying up to do but the execlets SYSINITX, SYS$LOGINOUT, and SYS$DIRECTORY are no longer the default boot path for debugging. The normal boot path of SYSINIT, LOGINOUT, and DIRECTORY now gets us to $ DIR. What does this really mean? Images are found and loaded as needed...paging, user mode, access checks, image activation, etc. In other words, business as usual.
> 
> We are currently working on part two, the installation procedure. We have not yet created a system disk. We netboot a memory disk image from our development cluster into memory and start executing. Soon we will be netbooting an installation kit and performing a standard installation on a target system disk and booting it, which involves switching from the memory disk to the system disk during startup.

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Clair, thanks for the update.  I'm looking forward to the webpage update and especially the webinar.

Is there an initial plan for how booting into a cluster from a shared system disk will work, and how quorum disk issues will be solved?  Also, are there any initial plans about how shadowed system disks will be handled when the system disk is not the quorum disk?  I realize these aren't on the 9.0 road map; I am just wondering how much design work has been done, if any.