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

[John Tran]

On Saturday, October 23, 2021 at 11:10:47 AM UTC-3, VAXman- wrote:
> In article <5dc71076-e2d7-44d7... at googlegroups.com>, abrsvc <dansabr... at yahoo.com> writes: 
> >On Saturday, October 23, 2021 at 8:27:55 AM UTC-4, Dymaxion Development wro= 
> >te: 
> >> Hi,=20 
> >>=20 
> >> 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 manage= 
> >r passed away so I really do not have any resources I could call upon.=20 
> >>=20 
> >> The system starts up, loads the and see the disks...and then hangs. I can= 
> >not 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 logg= 
> >ing 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.=20 
> >>=20 
> >> We have a backup drive which is a mirror of the system from a year ago. T= 
> >he MODPARAMS.DAT, AUTOPARAM.PAR and IA64VMSSYS.PAR are identical (the MODPA= 
> >RAMS.DAT compared via DIFF and the last two via CHECKSUM). I can successful= 
> >ly boot from that (we'd use it as the primary disk but it's a small drive a= 
> >nd there is no client data on it nor would it fit). This drive also a conve= 
> >rsational boot and it too hangs. In any case, the fact it does boot there a= 
> >re no hardware issues that could be preventing the system from booting.=20 
> >>=20 
> >> I was hoping for tips on how to resolve being able to boot successfully o= 
> >r tell where in the boot process it is hanging. Or perhaps how I would go a= 
> >bout transferring the OS from the backup disk to the primary disk.=20 
> >>=20 
> >> Thanks in advance.=20 
> >>=20
> >> 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 d=
> >oes 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 autho= 
> >r option). 
> > 
> >Dan 
> 
> I'd suggest trying to boot from OpeVMS distribution media (DVD). If that goes 
> well, it's possible that the system disk is 1) bad or 2) corrupted or 3) boot 
> "parition" has been horked. Much more can be ascertained from VMS itself once 
> the DVD is booted. 
> 
> -- 
> VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG 
> 
> I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

It's an RGB consoled connect via KVM. Nothing to capture  save taking a picture. That's the problem nothing much to go go. It gets to the boot sequence that displays the drives to boot from. It auto selects the default disk, the primary boot disk (which has a conversational twin with VMS_FLAGS 0,1). Then nothing.

I am trying to get to SYSBOOT to set STARTUP_D2 to enable logging to see what is going on. But I cannot get to SYSBOOT.