beaucham@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu (01/08/90)
We have found that upgrading from AIX 2.1.2 to 2.2.1 is quite a task. We were finally getting someplace when the following happened: While my collegue was using the 'devices' command to change a parameter for lp0, I executed 'penable tty4' so that I could test a terminal. This turns out to be a NO-NO! It not only crashed the system, but reboot to multi-user is now inoperative. It appears to go through all stages successively but will not complete the boot at the final stage. We looked at the /etc/system file under the installation & maintenance standalone shell and it looks o.k. We seem to be stuck! I would appreciate any insights as to what we might have screwed up when we caused the crash and how we might regain the ability to reboot, short of starting from scratch. Is there a particular file which might be brain-damaged? The practical moral is *don't attempt to execute penable while the devices command is open*. However, it seems that if there were an intrinsic problem with this, AIX should at least protect against a fatal crash. I hear that 2.2.1 is the last IBM AIX upgrade, so we will have to live with this and any other AIX limitations. Jim Beauchamp j-beauchamp@uiuc.edu