8.4 fieldtest
The Alpha safeset of the OpenVMS 8.4 environment comes as a zipped backup saveset.
First, I created a new disk on the Personal Alpha and restored the files. But that left the disk as an ordinary datadisk – it’s not bootable. Another approach involved a copy of the bootdisk, on which the backup saveset was restored, with /OVERWRITE; but that would caused another poblem: a few files could not be copied because of a lack of contiguous space; so I removed all files and retried. Now the disk started a boot, but then it failed on the second bootstrap.
Next, I tried an install from the original 8.3 CD but there is an error on it; That is: BACKUP ran into a CRC error that it couln’t pass. However, DUMP of the file where it happened went straight on, without an error…..
A next INIT of the target disk, and restoring the saveset once more, I tried SETBOOT. For Alpha, this is a foreigh command:
$ SETBOOT := $SYS$SETBOOT
$ SETBOOT DKA100:
which would setup the boot-sector as on SYS$SYSDEVICE, accoring the (rather limited) documentation.It took some time but in the end, the disk was bootable – but, again, failed on the secondary bootstrap:
>>> b dka100
(boot -file '' -flags '' 'dka100')
BOOT_RESET is ON: cold boot
Booting from the device 'dka100' file ''
Loaded the primary booter; size 0x9a000
%APB-I-FILENOTLOC, Unable to locate SYSBOOT.EXE
%APB-I-LOADFAIL, Failed to load secondary bootstrap, status = 00000910
CPU0 halted: reason: halt instruction executed
CPU0 halted: default
I’ve seen this error before, I think: when the directory holding the system was in lowercase: [vms$common], in stead of uppercase: [VMS$COMMON]. But here, there was nothing wrong with the whole environment..
Asked my collegues on the issue, and it turned out the saveset is actually an image backup.
So I reloaded the backup file onto the PA disks, and rerstored using:
$ backup/imag alphae84.bck/save dka100:
and that did the trick:
>>> b dka100
Alpha Emulator Firmware
Version 2.0.16 build Oct 8 2008 09:38:01
Initialized physical memory: 128 MB
Loaded HWRPB: physical address 2000
Initialized CPU0
(boot -file '' -flags '' 'dka100')
BOOT_RESET is ON: cold boot
Booting from the device 'dka100' file ''
Loaded the primary booter; size 0x9a000
OpenVMS (TM) Alpha Operating System, Version E8.4
© Copyright 1976-2009 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
Now this is a 4GB disk…
Prepared 8.4 CD
Once I knew how to restore the saveset into a bootable disk, I prepared writing it to CD: Created a 1.400.000 block logical device (fits on a 700Mb CD), and restored the saveset onto it. Now this disk image it to be burned to CD – I only need to get some, I’ve none left 😉