sg04@gte.com (Steven Gutfreund) (10/08/90)
I have been unable to get SUN OS 4.1 running on my SparcStation. Configuration: * Sparc 4/60C GX * 24 Meg Memory (Clearpoint) * 1.2 Gbyte HP 9754S Shoe box Symptoms: I have been running Sun OS 4.0.3 since January. No significant problems. Two months ago I tried to upgrade to 4.1. Under 4.1 the system operates sporatically. Man, more, rc occational report illegal instructions. Man sometimes gives core dumps. Occasional kernel dumps. Fsck finds corrupted files, dups, etc. Basically it feels like flakey memory. However, diagnostics do not show any memory problems. I have also tried swapping CPU boards without success. What did work was going back to 4.0.3. The system has run flawlessly for 1.5 months under 4.0.3. Under 4.1 ever third time I try and boot the system rc gets an illegal instruction trap or xnews blows up, or ps or man does not work. Corrupted distribution tape does not seem to be the problem. I tried the upgrade three times. Each time wiping the entire file system. Twice with one tape, and once with a different distribution tape. Other people have had successful installs with one of the tapes. I have prom rev 1.1, I run 4.1 with the generic_small kernel. No pmeg patches yet. I have tried building the GENERIC kernel, but it halts after setting up swap and dump. Yechezkal Shimon Gutfreund sgutfreund@gte.com GTE Laboratories, Waltham MA harvard!bunny!sgutfreund
katz@rpal.com (11/02/90)
In article <1990Oct7.234410.7957@rice.edu> sg04@gte.com (Steven Gutfreund) writes: > > I have been unable to get SUN OS 4.1 running on my SparcStation. > > Two months ago I tried to upgrade to 4.1. Under 4.1 the system operates > sporatically. Man, more, rc occational report illegal instructions. Man > sometimes gives core dumps. Occasional kernel dumps. Fsck finds corrupted > files, dups, etc. Basically it feels like flakey memory. In the past I have found unexplained failures of the sort you describe to have resulted from bringing up a new version of the OS on hardware which is of a sufficiently old rev. that the new software won't work on it. I would suggest contacting sun to check whether OS4.1 will run on your rev. of the CPU and SCSI boards. Morry Katz Rockwell Science Center administrator@rpal.com (machine administration issues) katz@rpal.com (other)