nes@prcrs.UUCP (Nancy Shoemaker) (08/10/88)
So much for Ultrix 2.3. As of 7:00 p.m., August 3, Massachusetts CSC was recommending that customers *not* install Ultrix 2.3 if they had installed any of the 2.2 patches or were running DECNet. Evidently there's more of a problem than just recovering from the first "Undefined: _latbug". [I suppose backing out all the patches and reinstalling all the .org0 files would get back to a good platform for the 2.3 setld's. Anyone else have any experience with this?] --Nancy Shoemaker (703) 556-2678 uunet!prcrs!nes
celozzi@CADILLAC.CAD.MCC.COM (Dominic Celozzi) (08/17/88)
In response to problems found with Ultrix 2.3 - my God yes - DO NOT install Ultrix 2.3 if you are running DECnet. My home site, Westinghouse Electronic Systems Group in Baltimore had made the mistake of attepting to install Ultrix 2.3. What a nightmare. As with most sites, they were running DECnet-Ultrix. Once the installation was finished, the system complained about fsck needing to be run manually. The only file partition allowed to be mounted was the root partition. (Flame On!) Now hear this, DEC was smart enough to have in their installation script the command "whoami" which resides in /usr/ucb/whoami. Now, you tell me, who in their right mind would reference a command not in the root partition during the installation of a system. (Flame Off) The system became so corrupted by the end of the pathing and removing of patches that I beleive the system administrator was forced to completely reinstall Ultrix 2.2! Bottom line, if you are using DECnet-Ultrix and wish to install Ultrix 2.3, by all means contact the Ultrix Support Group first and ask if they have come up with the proper procedure to do so yet. Dominic Celozzi MCC VLSI CAD Program [512] 343-0978 P.O. Box 200195, Austin, TX 78720 ARPA: celozzi@mcc.com UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!milano!cadillac!celozzi
moran@tron.UMD.EDU (Harvey R Moran) (08/26/88)
Reply-to: moran@tron.UMD.EDU (Harvey R Moran) In article <54084@felix.UUCP> celozzi@CADILLAC.CAD.MCC.COM (Dominic Celozzi) writes: > > >In response to problems found with Ultrix 2.3 - my God yes - DO NOT >install Ultrix 2.3 if you are running DECnet. My home site, >Westinghouse Electronic Systems Group in Baltimore had made the >mistake of attepting to install Ultrix 2.3. What a nightmare. As ... >of a system. (Flame Off) The system became so corrupted by the end >of the pathing and removing of patches that I beleive the system >administrator was forced to completely reinstall Ultrix 2.2! > Not quite. Ultrix Support gave me a procedure using /etc/setld to remove the 2.3 set and re-install the 2.2 set. I removed the 2.3 and when trying to put back the 2.2, setld told me it was already there. So I rebooted and things *appeared* to work. Wrong! Among other things, /usr/lib/sendmail was a zero length file. What I ended up doing, at the suggestion of Ultrix Support, was using the standalone system (a.k.a. miniroot) to "restore" the dump level 0 made just before the install of 2.3. In doing this, I got file system full messages as soon as restore tried to read the symbol table. I stumbled around for a while and then mounted a "spare" disk file system on /tmp of the miniroot. I had to play "musical /etc/mount's" to restore all the file systems. Is this a well known technique? It is not in the manual and at least two people at Ultrix Support did not suggest it when the "file system full" problem was presented to them. I thought of it while taking a break to sweep my hair off the floor. At any rate, you can bet tron will *not* be among the first sites to install *any* new release of Ultrix. I'll leave that to you more adventurous sys-admins, and get around to it when the dust appears to have settled. Harvey Moran (301) 765-2108 or (301) 993-7860 ...!uunet!umbc3!tron!moran
animal@ernie.UUCP (Alan R. Silverman) (08/26/88)
Reply-to: animal@ernie.UUCP (Alan R. Silverman) I am running a Unix shop on 12 Suns and 2 Vaxes. We had MAJOR problems with NFS Stale fhandles that literally crippled our Vax. This appeared after upgrading from Ultrix 2.0 to 2.2 with bug fixes. I talked to CSC in Massachusetts and they recommended going back to 2.0, upgrading to 2.2 without bugfixes, then loading the 2.3 update. So far, things have gone well, but we paid a price in downtime (everyday the Vax got hung on stale fhandles) and aggravation. 2.3 looks ok for now. Alan R. Silverman (408) 922-3814 NEC America Transmission Development Department
animal@ernie.NECAM.COM (Alan R. Silverman) (08/26/88)
Reply-to: animal@ernie.NECAM.COM (Alan R. Silverman)
Stale fhandles crippled our Vax as we have 12 Suns sharing the
mail and home directories via NFS. You can imagine what happened when
10 or 20 engineers tried to compile, readnews, or otherwise access the
VAX exported filesystems.
We didn't actually load 2.3 straight out. After hearing the
horror story from DEC's csc, after they tried to load 2.3 on top of
a 2.2 OS with the bugfix and DECNET installed, we went back to the
2.0 tapes and then to 2.2 without the bugfix, then upgraded to 2.3 .
Results have been favorable.
^|-
(0 o) Alan R. Silverman
(+) NEC America, Inc.
=(_)= (408) 922-3814
U aka animal@ernie
Ack. Thpth.