info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (02/25/85)
From: Richard Garland <OC.GARLAND%CU20B@COLUMBIA.ARPA> Today I finally got around to upgrading our 780 to VMS V4.0. Our 730 has been running for a month OK so I figured it was time. The upgrade proceded smoothly till the system had to reboot the first time, and this failed with the message: BOOT-F-Unable to find BOOT file after trying a few times with same result, I booted the disk from the regular rooted directory which still had my version 3 system (I said "B DB0" instead of "B" from the console.) The old system actually came up and I found that the new system directory was munged. i.e. I checked the files in [SYSF.SYSEXE] and the system said illegal directory file. I couldn't do DUMP/HEADER because the upgrade had deleted DUMP along with other "unimportant" files. The other directories in [SYSF.] were OK, ie [SYSF.SYSLIB], [SYSF.SYSHLP] etc. At this point I gave up and brought back my old system (god bless removable disks). Now what funny thing did I do to bring this on? - I do think the upgrade works since I did it on the 730. Well while I was waiting for VMSINSTAL to chug away I was snooping around from another terminal and I noticed that my dump file hasn't been resized in about 3 years - it's 2 megabytes too small. I said "what the heck - why not delete the whole thing since it's not doing any good anyway". (my microVAX runs without a dump file fine and other version 3 machines also do fine. You just can't send a big tape with an SPR to DEC). I did delete it and figured it wouldn't really go away till next reboot. Soon thereafter the upgrade got to the reboot and failed as I explained. Now the question: Was the upgrade failure (the corruption of the upgrade system directory [SYSF]SYSEXE.DIR) due to my deleting the dump file from the "current" system directory ([SYS0.SYSEXE]), or was this a coincidence? Do I need a dump file on the system to do a successful upgrade? Does such a dump file have to be the right size or can I make it 1 block? Any help will be appreciated since I will be trying again next saturday. Rg -------
info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (02/25/85)
From: ingersoll@ADA-VAX If you delete your dump file, create other files on the disk that contained the dump file ( the directory [SYSF.SYSEXE] ) then reboot, the system may write over some of the new files. To delete the dump file, rename it first to something other than sysdump.dmp. Reboot the system, and then delete the dump file. From then on the system will use the page file for the system dumps. For more information on system dump file consult the VAX/VMS Internals and Data Structures manual pages 154-156, 545. Steve
info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (02/26/85)
From: (Stephen Tihor) <TIHOR@NYU-CMCL1.ARPA> We have been running without a Dump File in the same manner as a micro-VAX does for several years. Assuming your Pagefile is at least some small integer multiple of VIRTUALPAGECNT+1000 then you can simply set: SAVEDUMP = 1 ! Save crash dump in PAGEFILE.SYS DUMPFILE = 0 ! so don;t have a dump file and if you really don't want a dump file at all then just att ANAL/CRASH SYS$SYSTEM:PAGEFILE.SYS COPY NL:TOSSDUMP.DMP EXIT \\ Stephen Tihor / CIMS / NYU / 251 Mercer Street / New York, NY 10012 // (( DEC Enet: RHEA::DECWRL::"""TIHOR@NYU-CMCL1.ARPA""" NYUnet: TIHOR.CMCL1 )) // ARPAnet: Tihor@NYU-CMCL1 UUCPnet address: ...!ihnp4!cmcl2!cmcl1!tihor \\ -------