[Info-vax] Issue with booting and/or seeing the SYSBOOT prompt

[abrsvc]

On Saturday, October 23, 2021 at 8:27:55 AM UTC-4, Dymaxion Development wrote:
> Hi, 
> 
> I am a OpenVMS newbie and I inherited trying to determine why a system no longer boots. It's an RX2600 running OpenVMS 8.4. The former system manager passed away so I really do not have any resources I could call upon. 
> 
> The system starts up, loads the and see the disks...and then hangs. I cannot tell if it is waiting for an answer to a prompt or just doesn't proceed. I wanted to enable the SYSBOOT prompt to enable STARTUP_D2 to enable logging to see where it is hanging. But booting in conversational mode does the exact same thing. One of the boot options has VMS_FLAGS set to 0,1 for the same drive. And even I go into the EFI shell and set it, it hangs. 
> 
> We have a backup drive which is a mirror of the system from a year ago. The MODPARAMS.DAT, AUTOPARAM.PAR and IA64VMSSYS.PAR are identical (the MODPARAMS.DAT compared via DIFF and the last two via CHECKSUM). I can successfully boot from that (we'd use it as the primary disk but it's a small drive and there is no client data on it nor would it fit). This drive also a conversational boot and it too hangs. In any case, the fact it does boot there are no hardware issues that could be preventing the system from booting. 
> 
> I was hoping for tips on how to resolve being able to boot successfully or tell where in the boot process it is hanging. Or perhaps how I would go about transferring the OS from the backup disk to the primary disk. 
> 
> Thanks in advance. 
> 
> John

There is not much to go on here...

Can you post what is presented on the terminal screen thus far?

Since you say the disks are seen and the system "starts up", what exactly does that mean?  Again post what you see.

The resolution of this may require direct contact (and perhaps some cost).  If you can, post an Email or allow replies directly to you (reply to author option).

Dan