bryan@GOMEZ.phys.virginia.edu (10/11/90)
Hi folks, We recently purchased a DECstation 3100, and soon thereafter corrupted its system disk while fiddling with the swap space. We have a complete backup, so it shouldn't be a big problem to go back to the configuration we had before. We'd planned to do this by booting a standalone system from tape, then either re-installing the original ULTRIX distribution and restoring from the backup tape, or using the standalone 'restore' to just restore the root directory from the backup tape. Unfortunately, the only standalone ULTRIX tape we have available is an ancient version 2.0 (specifically, ULTRIX WS V2.0 SUPPORTED, AQ-MM11A-BE), and it doesn't seem to work. The standalone system boots, and we can perform the patch semi-described in the ULTRIX release notes for version 3.1D/UWS 2.2D (page A-3), in which we edit install.1 and change 'root_D=$2' to 'root_D=RD54'. (I'm told this is necessary for RZ56 disks because the installation software doesn't have partition tables for the RZ56.) Re-starting the installation procedure, and choosing the item 'BASIC INSTALLATION' from the resulting menu, we see a message indicating that 'mkfs' has successfully created the root file system on partition 'a' of the disk, then we get a string of error messages like the following: TK50 unit 5: receive diagnostics command failed. TK50 unit# 5: offline TK50 unit# 5: offline read after eom failed: no such device or address. . . . (repeats ad infinitum) This seems to result from the installation procedure's calling 'restore', since we see the same messages when we try to do a restore by hand. Some notes: 1. The TK50 *is* unit 5, and it *is* online. This is the drive which was successfully addressed only minutes before, when the standalone system was booted from it. 2. We've tried replacing this TK50 with another, identical, TK50 and we see the same results. 3. We've tried talking to the tape drive, using the 'mt' command in the standalone system, and mt can't talk to the drive either. 'mt status' results in: TK50 unit 5: receive diagnostics command failed. TK50 tape drive: residual = 0 ds = 0 er = 0 4. Looking in /dev, we find that the proper device special files are there. Deleting these and re-creating them has no effect. and finally, the coup de grace: 5. We've booted an identical (working) system with the same tape, and found that it, too, can't talk to the local tape drive after booting. We're baffled, and the local DECpeople are baffled. It's possible that we may be able to lay hands on a later distribution tape eventually, but for the moment we're stuck with this one. (The system was originally installed with an 'ULTRIX 32 v3.1D' tape, borrowed from another institution.) Can anyone suggest a patch for the problem we're seeing? Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Bryan. |||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Bryan K. Wright |||||||||||||||||||||||||| | University of Virginia Physics Department | | (804) 924-6814 Office, (804) 293-7267 Home | | Internet: Bryan@gomez.phys.Virginia.EDU, Bitnet: bkw1a@Virginia.EDU | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| | "If you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste | | much more like prunes than rhubarb does." -- Groucho | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||