[Info-vax] running VMS on PWS (SRM console)

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <qn2ci7$vrh$1 at gioia.aioe.org>,
helbig at asclothestro.multivax.de (Phillip Helbig (undress to reply))
writes: 

> Reason: Today, my electricity meter was supposed to be swapped out and, 
> having no UPS, I powered down the cluster.  As it turned out, the guy 
> who was to install it was sick and the company didn't call to cancel the 
> appointment, so it was all unnecessary.  After powering up, one PWS 
> seems to have died (nothing at the console prompt).  It could be that 
> the battery is bad and it reverted to the SRM console and graphics 
> output.  I'll swap in the spare and, if the removed machine otherwise 
> looks OK, replace the battery and it will become the new spare.

Well, cluster is back with the original hardware.  :-)

It could have been a lot quicker if I had remembered that the console is
accessible only via a graphics monitor after it reverts to the default
and that, of the three non-satellite machines in the cluster, I actually
have a graphics monitor on the PWS with, as it turned out, the bad
battery.  :-|

But at least I replaced the battery, and learned how to do this.  IIRC,
on the XP1000 the battery can be replaced relatively easy once the cover
is off, but on the PWS one has to remove the mother board ("main logic
board") in order to get to it---which of course means that it can't be
done on a running system.  The other PWS in the cluster is OK.  When I
have time, I'll replace the battery in the XP1000 as well (I believe it
is also a CR2032)---probably when the electricity meter is swapped.  And
the BOOT_OSFLAGS are now set correctly on all machines.  So, in the
current state (with AUTO_ACTION=RESTART), at least the two with good
batteries should come back up if there is an unexpected power cycle. 
I'm not sure what happens with regard to asking the time if the battery
is bad: does it give up after a while and boot anyway?  If so, will it 
pick up the correct time once in the cluster?

I also learned that not all of my replacement machines are actually 
ready to go.  I'll have to check the batteries and graphics cards and 
see which machines actually work, or can be made to work.  I might have 
to combine a few machines in order to get a smaller number of working 
machines.  But now that I know that the motherboard can be removed 
easily, perhaps I can just swap them between various PWS.  I have 
several different ones, but all "au".  Should there be any problem 
swapping the motherboards?  Also, one of the newer (to me) machines 
shows DKB0 at the console but, when connected, no disks actually show 
up; perhaps a bad graphics card or a loose connection.