[rescue] Beginner VAX

[Brian Hechinger]

On Fri, Jul 27, 2001 at 12:44:26AM -0400, Dave McGuire wrote:
> 
> > -brian (my collection is but a drop in the bucket compared to dave's)
>   Nah.

uhm, ok, whatever.  sure, i do have a 10x10 storage locker that will soon be
bursting at the seams, and i HAVE started to take over the dining room, but....

i still lack warehouse space, a cray, and an electron microscope.  the warehouse
space and the cray can possibly be fixed begining of next year.  not i gotta
start looking for an electron microscope. :)

> > ps: GOT THE GOD DAMN CLUSTER TO WORK FINALLY.  WHEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!
>   Huh?  Do tell!

had VMS 5.5-2 installed on the /400 for a while now.  recently got the circuit
breaker in the room upgraded (i could turn the PDP-11/23+ on, but if i turned
the RX02 on as well it was lights out) so i could run more than one VAX 4000
at a time. so i started screwing with getting a cluster going with the two
machines.  got it almost working, but the MSCP server refused to server my
disks.  fart around, fart around, drive an insane number of miles to pick up
that 4000/500 i got on ebay with the two SCSI controllers (CMD223 and KFQSA)
picked up a CD of VMS 7.2 (the Open is silent) and installed 7.2 on the machine
sunday.  it bitched and moaned about the disks, but never gave me a useful
error that pointed to the true problem.  sooo........

got the DSSI cable out, setup the /300 to have direct access to the disks in
the /400 (boot server) and set the /300 up as not-a-satallite.  it would boot,
but it was kinda half assed since the disks still weren't being served by MSCP
and so i would never get a satallite to boot into this cluster.

farted around, tried this, tried that, got some excellent advice from an old
VMS hand, and finally stumbled on the problem.  turns out DSSI disks have
their own ALLOCLASS, and if it is set to 0 (like it was on all my drives) they
wouldn't be served by the MSCP server.  logged into the drives (how often does
one get to say that they logged into their hard-drives *G*) and put the correct
values in for the ALLOCLASS.  fiddled some other values as well to make sure
that everything will work (two sets of DSSI disks on different controllers,
so FORCEUNI and UNITNUM had to be tweak on two drives) rebooted and voila.
i've not got a cluster of two machine that see disks all around.  got a couple
loose ends to tie up (need to get DECnet and MultiNet set up on the new system
and them it's ready to go)

i was going to run NetBSD on the 4000/500, but i'm not so sure anymore.  i may
just drop that thing in the cluster as well.

if i do use the /500 in the cluster the config will be:

VAX 4000/500 64MB RAM
VAX 4000/400 64MB RAM
VAX 4000/300 32MB RAM
VAX 4000/300 32MB RAM

all will be connected with ethernet and DSSI for a mighty nice cluster.

while i'm at it, i'm looking for memory for the above boxes.  they all have
a single ram card in them, and so have three free slots each.

now to bug he who knows who about the DSSI cabled and i can go drag the second
/300 our of storage.  yummy.

-brian