Re: SAN boot on 6H1

Ok, here are some news. I prepared a SAN boot disk (hdisk83) with
alt_disk_copy from an AIX living on hdisk92 (an ssa boot disk).

The I set the bootlist to hdisk83 (1st) and hdisk92 (2nd) (bootlist -m
normal hdisk83 hdisk92):

root@tina:/> bootlist -o -m normal
hdisk83 blv=hd5
hdisk83 blv=hd5
hdisk92 blv=hd5

So the SAN disk is mentioned twice.

After shutting down the server, it rebooted successfully from hdisk83
(the SAN disk).

After another shutdown, I took a look into the SMS menu. While
entering the Multiboot menu, many ssa and fibre channel disks were
scanned.

Displaying the current boot sequence, there were two empty entries
which belong, as I assume, to the (one) SAN disk mentioned twice in
the bootlist, see above:

Version M2P050203_condor_M2
(c) Copyright IBM Corp. 2000 All rights reserved.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Current Boot Sequence

1
2
3 SSA-SCSI-2 disk at 002035E636D900D ( loc=U0.1-P1-I1/Q1 )
4 None
5 None



I was not able to select another or the same disk with the SMS menu:


Configure 1st Boot Device

Device Current Device
Number Position Name
1 - Diskette
2 3 SSA-SCSI-2 disk at 002035E636D900D ( loc=U0.1-P1-I1/Q1 )
3 - Ethernet ( loc=U0.1-P1-I2/E1 )
4 - Ethernet ( loc=U0.1-P1-I3/E1 )
5 - SSA-SCSI-2 disk at 000629CDBE9F00D ( loc=U0.1-P1-I5/Q1 )
6 - SSA-SCSI-2 disk at 002035E62FA300D ( loc=U0.1-P1-I5/Q1 )
7 - Ethernet ( loc=U0.1-P1-I10/E1 )
8 - SCSI Tape ( loc=U0.1-P1/Z1-A0,0 )
9 - SCSI CD-ROM ( loc=U0.1-P1/Z1-A1,0 )
10 - Ethernet ( loc=U0.1-P1/E1 )
11 None


After leaving the SMS menu (without changing anything), the 6H1
did not boot from the SAN disk but boots from the ssa disk at entry
3. But the bootlist seems to be unchanged, it is still

root@tina:/> bootlist -o -m normal
hdisk83 blv=hd5
hdisk83 blv=hd5
hdisk92 blv=hd5


It seems that we won't be able to get rid of our old ssa equipment
soon since SAN booting is not stable with this system.

Stefan Rodenstein <stefan_rodenstein@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> Dmitri Pasyutin <pasd@xxxxxxx> writes:
>
>> On Wednesday 30 November 2005 10:22,
>> stefan_rodenstein@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>>
>>> I just installed AIX 5.3 onto a SAN disk (DS4300) connected to
>>> a 7026 6H1, but now I can't boot this disk because it is not
>>> shown in SMS Muliboot menu - I only find SCSI Tape and CD, ssa
>>> Disks and Ethernet there. Does somebody know what's going on
>>> here and how I can boot using SAN?
>>
>> How exactly did you install AIX onto this disk? Did you do a
>> fresh install from CDs or via NIM? Or did you clone an existing
>> rootvg onto it (or did an alt_disk_install) and are now trying to
>> boot off this disk?
>
> I installed the 6H1 using CDs. The AIX booted from CD and found the SAN
> disk (BTW, it is attached via a Brocade 3850 switch) and also properly
> installed on it. It is also possible to install the disk using
> alt_disk_copy from an already running AIX (which was booted e.g. from
> ssa) and set the bootlist to the SAN disk. Even bootdisk -B says the
> disk is bootable.
>
> I also tried to install using NIM, but the AIX booted via network was
> not able to find any installable disk - not even ssa disks. Seems
> there are some drivers missing in my NIM.
.

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