elsen@imecom.imec.be (04/09/91)
The following is a query in order to find out whether anyone else
has seen the following happen on ultrix 4.n systems.
Problem / description : timed running in slave mode on 20
decstations booting from DS5400 server.
Timed also running in slave mode on 2 DECstation 5000
Master timed runs on a VAX3900 (Ultrix 3.1) : timed exe on this
systems is the Ultrix 4.1 version.
What happens : sometimes all stations seem to receive an invalid
time from the timed server (this only happens about every 2 weeks).
This causes all systems to hang since apparently automounter dumps core
when the system time is being set to a value which corresponds
to nonsens , see below
********************************* ENTRY 2. *********************************
----- EVENT INFORMATION -----
EVENT CLASS OPERATIONAL EVENT
OS EVENT TYPE 310. TIME CHANGE
SEQUENCE NUMBER 6.
OPERATING SYSTEM ULTRIX 32
OCCURRED/LOGGED ON Thu Oct 19 01:45:43 1911 MET DST
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
OCCURRED ON SYSTEM isis
SYSTEM ID x0A000005 MICROCODE REV = 5.
SYSTYPE REG. x01530102
FIRMWARE REV = 83.
PROCESSOR TYPE KA650
********************************* ENTRY 3. *********************************
(this entry in fact belongs to a vaxstation , but the same can be
seen on the decstations)
Further more when this incident occurs we can see that files in
/dev are corrupt for each and every decstation booting from
the ds5400 server.
Special device files involved are mainly pty devices but sometimes
also "mem" and "kmem".
After remaking those devices with MAKEDEV the station itself
can operate correctly again.
Question : has anyone else seen problems with timed of
this nature ?
Remark : this incident has occurred twice on us when each of
the DECstation 5000's were being installed for the
first time.
Would there be any reason for the timed protocol to
fail when a stations boots into the network for
the first time ?
Is it "bad" I mean "real bad" to run the ultrix041 timed
on a 3900 (vax) running ultrix 3.1 ?
Due to time constraints it was not yet possible to upgrade
this machine.
Thanks for any help ,
Marc (elsen@imec.be)