[Info-vax] booting from newer SANS

[pcoviello at gmail.com]

On Saturday, December 12, 2020 at 2:35:11 PM UTC-5, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2020-12-11 15:36:11 +0000, pcov... at gmail.com said: 
> 
> > On Friday, December 11, 2020 at 10:24:29 AM UTC-5, Stephen Hoffman wrote: 
> >> On 2020-12-11 15:11:49 +0000, pcov... at gmail.com said: 
> >> 
> >>> On Thursday, December 10, 2020 at 8:00:55 PM UTC-5, pcov... at gmail.com wrote: 
> >>>> ... Loading.: SSD Boot Device $1$DGA3010: FGA0.2031-0002-AC02-6B0D 
> >>>> ... Load of SSD Boot Device $1$DGA3010: FGA0.2031-0002-AC02-6B0D 
> >>>> failed: Not Found 
> >>> ... $ SET BOOTBLOCK /PRESERVE=SIGNATURES /I64 $1$DGA3010: 
> >> 
> >> That command doesn't do what you think it does.
> >> ...
> > oh! interesting! I had found it the 8.4-2l1 install documentation and 
> > thought it might help if there was an issue with the backup/image I did,
> That command is intended to preserve the usefulness of an existing boot 
> alias, by preserving the existing signature. If the existing signature 
> wasn't working, preserving it is moot. 
> 
> EFI prefers that the operating system to assign a new signature for 
> each device and for each partition. EFI boots partitions. OpenVMS knows 
> not of partitions and boots devices, whether newly installed or 
> restored. OpenVMS doesn't align with EFI expectations there, and 
> OpenVMS users tend to get cranky about having to remove and re-add boot 
> aliases, that either from EFI directly, or from BOOT_OPTIONS.COM tool. 
> 
> With no partitioning support, OpenVMS hacks up a whole device by 
> creating between three and five partitions depending on file 
> alignments. This to avoid console-level operations clobbering storage 
> based on the expected partitioning map stored within GPT. 
> 
> BACKUP, BTW, calls SYS$SETBOOTSHR, which is the underpinnings of SET 
> BOOTBLOCK, and of the SYS$SETBOOT tool. 
> 
> To see some more information, invoke SYS$SETBOOT as a foreign command. 
> There's a simplistic partition-viewing and partition-reporting tool 
> available there, too. There are four interfaces available underneath; 
> CLD, RUN, foreign command, and callable API. 
> 
> TL;DR: When EFI-based bootstraps go sideways, remove and re-add the 
> boot alias entry, and try again.
> -- 
> Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

deleting it and adding it back in didn't make a difference,  VSI now believes that the so called AH400 HBA is not a true AH400.  Vendor is checking on this.  
I've also asked the vendor to put on hold in bringing anything else in since this nay be the issue and nothing to do with the actual SAN.

thanks every one