Posted on

27-Jan-2010

Installation succceeded
The error I got on first start of FreeAXP is documented – and that proved Ok because installation of 8.4 Fieltest went smooth – abeit slow. Luckily, the workstation has a dual-core processor; like Personal Alpha, it takes one core for 100%, and it may slow down other processes, causing stalls in normal use. But it’s workable.

There is one thing to take care about when setting up a IP-based cluster: best you setup systems as unclustered, or be sure your connections over IP exist. If on the same LAN, the standard LAN communication takes precedence. And if system using IP clustering is started, it seems to expect other systems to be reachable. If not, boot will wait until another member comes along: you cannot boot an IP_based clustermember by itself….Check if the same applies when booting MINinmal…

Routing issues
As I found out: Clustering over IP won’t be feasable if the nodes are on the same LAN and SCS traffic (basicly level-2 in the ISO model) reaches ‘the other side’. LAN takes precedence over IP in those cases, and that’s why the emulator running 8.4 was clustered with Diana: Same LAN, no blocking if non_IP ttraffic. This is documented, by the way.
So I started to set up a separate network, using my new router and the old Linksys one.
It’s a hell of a job to get it running. In the end, trafic from behind the LINKSYS router (netwerk 192.168.1.0) could reach any node in the normal netwrk (192.168.0.0) but the other way around is a problem – no matter what you do. At least, PING doesn’t pass beyond the internal interface. It must have something to do with routing tables, but even that didn’t work properly. For now, there are two lines, because the Vigor router allows a seecondary address, it can be directly attached to the other network – but not using the WAN-port of the LINKSYS router. A bad solution, probably, but it works for now. Furthermore, it might be sufficient to open the UDP ports for IPCI (49152, if I’m not mistaken), but whether that allows traffic to come through remains to be seen. Also, the muticast address needs to pass the network – I know how to set that up 🙂
Running 8.4 EFT
I found a few things that seem not right – and these will first be passed to HP: The inability to boot standalone – even MINimal – when IPCI is enabled, and some problems with TCPIP commands. Both have been stored at HP (I got confirmation on these)

Posted on

23-Jan-2010

New kids on the block
I got my niece’s old ACER laptop, it has a non-working TFT screen and a CD drive that isn’t reckognized by Windows (it seems) but otherwise running fine. That one (nicknamed “Melvin” – after her cat) will be used in testing OpenVMS 8.4 when running PersonalAlpha (and do nothing else).
PersonalAlpha on my company laptop fails to connect over the Loopback interface, but I think that’s due to the fact that I had to disable some interfaces for the VPN connection …

Speaking of PA: It isn’t the only free Alpha-emulator any more. Camiel Ver der Hoeven started working on a ES40 emulator a few years ago, and Bruce Claremont of Migration Specialties joined in to complete the CPU emulation. There will be a commercial version some time this year, but the free version is available in BETA test; the first versions were Windows 64 only, but since last week, a 32-bit version is added.
This has now been installed on my normal workstation – to test it, and to add into the 8.4 fieldtest as well. I started installing it:
It got as far as obtaining the initialisation data for the system disk, but than run into a runtime error… Well, it’s still beta, it’s allowed in that phase :). Ok, contact Bruce and retry.

Next week, I;’ll spend some time in setting up the Cluster-over-IP environment. The links have been set up.

Posted on

17-Jan-2010

Yet another old laptop
The number of old laptops to run the Alpha emulator has, again, increased. My niece switched from a Windows-base machine to MacBook – and I could get her old Acer Asipre system – the TFT screen seems dead, not any sign of output, but the virdeo hardware itself is ok, and an external screen does work – with panning, but that doen’t do any harm. It’s a Windows XP Home system but that’s fine for testing purposes. It is in thr porces of being cleaned and upgraded, and when done, I’ll put some PA disks on it. And perhaps other stuff.
VMS 8.4 testing
One of the new facilities of 8.4 is clustering the VMS systems over IP. And the system named Daphne had to be changed for that. It’s required to have it in a different network, so i had to chnage the IP configuration – to be done anyway since there had been errors from the start. It took some time, but in the end, I succeeded in doing so, but only by using the TCPIP$CONFIG procedure. Changing addresses using TCPIP ifconfig solved the problem momentarily – just in the volatile database. But the persistant data could NOT be changed. At least, I would expect it to be able to change the IP address using TCPIP SET HOST and TCPIP SET CONFIGURATION INTERFACE, but the first failed time aftre time because the host is used as an alias – correct, it is – but removing the alias wan’t possible either, for the same reason.
Moving to a standalone system was no rpoblem either, changing modparams.dat and run Autogen, but I did change the name of cluster_authorize.dat, and a direct reboot from autogen wasn’t executed. Manual reboot did work, though, and after that, I ran cluster_config_Lan to change Daphne to a clusternode, over TCPIP. The next reboot started fine, but since there isn’t a node on the other side, it hung at that point.
I’ll dig into that later.

Posted on

14-Jan-2010

VMS 8.4 fieldtest
I had the systemdisk of the “new” PWS updated to 8.4, by restoring the EFT backup saveset as a file backup – not /IMAGE and though all files would have been updated, it failed to boot, BUGCHECKing during boot since SYSINIT could not be found.
Bu now I have a bootable CD – being complete – I re-applied the update; just DECWINDOWS wasn’t updated. Update suceeded – and the system (Daphne) will now boot. It’s just that the connection to the network seems to bad, I think the network cable isn’t connected to the switch. The system will be moved to another location so the connection to the LAN is right, after that I can start testing clustering over IP.
Speaking of which: The emulator on the laptop (Eden) has been setup that way, but since Diana is on the same LAN, Eden will boot into the cluster using the standard method – without TCPIP. So Daphne needs to be on a different LAN, and it needs to be a different cluster to test. So I’ll set up Daphne first, and add Eden – the 8.4 instance – into that cluster. The new router supports VLAN – as well as the new router – so interconnectr between the two LANs should be possible.
VPN test
Connection fails in authentication. The Vigor logs shows PPTP as protocol, and that wasn’t configured that way. This is still under investigation.

Posted on

07-Jan-2010

More tests
Got some time to test external access – including VPN – from the company laptop.
The Vista VPN facility seems unable to handle multiple active network drivers – which may make connection for VMS IP-clustering troublesome…. And setting up the connection parameters is not that staight forward, some items (including IPSEC settings) are somewhat hidden. But one of the connections I have set up did work at some point. At least, it was trying to identify the user but hung at that point. It’s very likely this is caused by the company’s public wireless which doesn’t allow anything else but web traffic. Because of that, Telnet and SSH weren’t possible either – and yesterday tests from my ISP have been successful for these. This applies to FTP as well.
I could of course have searched for a connection to the company internal network, where these restrictions do not apply. But that would mean move to another room, and I simply didn’t want to. Since I now know the Vista restrictions, and seem to have a valid set-up, I could try it by other means – later tonight, or tomorrow.