Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!cmcl2!lanl!unm-la!unmvax!nmtsun!hydrovax From: hydrovax@nmtsun.nmt.edu (M. Warner Losh) Newsgroups: comp.os.vms Subject: Re: (none) Message-ID: <554@nmtsun.nmt.edu> Date: 24 Jun 88 17:32:39 GMT References: <8806240034.AA27234@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Reply-To: hydrovax@nmtsun.nmt.edu (M. Warner Losh) Organization: NMT Hydrology program Lines: 31 In article <8806240034.AA27234@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> SYSMGR@IPG.PH.KCL.AC.UK writes: > >Can anyone suggest why one of our LAVC microVAXen fails to re-boot after a >crash or powerfail, with the message "Unable to locate SYS.EXE", whereas the >other three re-boot off the Ethernet? An explicit ">>>B XQ" works fine. >The only differences I can think of between one that works and the one with >the problem are: > >(b) The problem system has VMS 4.7 available as s/alone system in [SYS1], > the others also have a s/alone system in the same place but 4.5 not 4.7 > I just got done "licking" this sort of problem. Some background first. When the system is booting off of disk X it looks for X:[SYSEXE]SYSBOOT.EXE and executes that. The next step in the boot process reads in x:[sys0.sysexe]sys.exe. Now then, if you don't have this file, it dies with the error that you give. The solution is to rename X:[000000]SYSEXE.DIR to something else (like SYSEXE-OLD.DIR). This will force the boot ROMS to look elsewhere for the SYSBOOT program. The down side is that you can no longer boot the s/alone system in SYS1. Since you indicated that it is in a clean room this may be for you. If you want to bring the system up on the SYS1 partition, then you would need to rename the SYSEXE-OLD.DIR back to SYSEXE.DIR before your bring the system down. AND ALL THIS MAY CHANGE UNDER VMS 5.0....... -- bitnet: warner@hydrovax.nmt.csnet M. Warner Losh arpa/csnet: warner@hydrovax.nmt.edu uucp: ...{cmcl2, ihnp4}!lanl!unmvax!nmtsun!warner%hydrovax