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
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