Q: Is there any way to delete pages from a
spoolfile already sitting in OUT.HPSPOOL?
A: Michael Berkowitz replied:
Use SPIFF, the SPOOK for native mode spooler.
Q: How do I enable DNS on my HP e3000? I’ve
poked around in NMMGR, but I couldn’t find anything obvious.
A: Gavin Scott and Joshua Johnson replied:
This feature is enabled by creating and adding the appropriate entries to the file RESLVCNF.NET.SYS. You should also create a link file called /etc/resolv.conf, if not already present. You can read all about it in the manual "Configuring and Managing MPE/iX
Internet Services (MPE/iX 7.5)" at
http://docs.hp.com/mpeix/pdf/32650-90906.pdf and look for the section called
"Configuring the DNS Resolver" in chapter 8. There is absolutely
nothing in NMMGR that relates to DNS.
Q: We have a 7980S tape device that is not
responding; that is, we put the tape in, but it is not coming online. I'm not
sure if this is helpful, but I also show that a user is logged into the system
using the LDEV assigned to the tape drive. SHOWDEV TAPE also does not list the
device.
A: Gilles Schipper replied:
I've seen this
before for DDS drives, but the same characteristics of this problem probably
apply to the 7980S as well. Probably during your most recent reboot, there was
a (possibly temporary) malfunction with your tape drive's power supply such
that its existence was not recognized during the boot up process. That would
normally result in a "device unavailable" condition and the
subsequent disabling of that logical device number. I have noticed instances
where that LDEV number is actually made available to the logon device number
pool (for subsequent assignment for logon session device numbers). Long story
short, the solution appears to be a power cycle, START NORECOVERY reboot.
After shutting
down and powering off the CPU and all devices, run ODE to ensure all devices
are recognized before START NORECOVERY. Failure to recognize the device at that
point should lead to further investigation of the power supply, SCSI device
number setting, or other hardware malfunction. If this situation happens
frequently, I would first suspect a problem with the power supply of that
device.
[Editor's note: I have seen this situation occur several times with a 7980S. In all cases it was because the 7980S had not completed its startup/diagnostics when the 3000 went looking for it. My advice has always been to make sure all the peripherals are powered up and in a wait state before power-cycling the HP 3000.]
Q: (a) Is there any difference in
performance between submitting 2 simultaneous backups of 2 distinct sets of
files on seperate drives (using a 4 way processor system) versus doing a store
@.@.@;;storeset=(*T1),(*T2)? (b) Does an online backup cover everything such
that I can do a reload afterwards, or do I have to back up certain files
without having anyone on the system? (c) Does doing a Store @.@.@ cover every possible file for a backup?
A: Goetz Neumann replied:
(a) While the first commandment when answering performance questions is 'it depends', I can see no fundamental difference between the two methods. (b) Assuming you are asking about TurboStore, the question is do you use plain ';ONLINE' or ';ONLINE=START|END' (aka TrueOnline)? TrueOnline will backup files that are open for write-access at the sync point, the default ;ONLINE will tell you which files it could not backup because they were open for write access. (c) Yes, that is equivalent to STORE / . If you use user volumesets, I recommend to also make sure all the volumesets directories get stored, i.e. add
;DIRECTORY;ONVS=MPEXL_SYSTEM_VOLUME_SET,
user_set1, user_set2, ... to your backup options.
Q: What is the typical explanation for the
situation on an HP3000 where all the sessions start to freeze up. Anyone trying
to logon or run a different program get frozen. At first, I wondered if there
was a problem with the local network, but I froze up on the console typing in a
UDC command that happened to run a program. I rebooted the computer, and that
fixed the problem. I'm just curious what the problem was. The system is an A400
running MPE/iX 7.0.
A: Tom Emerson, Dane Bodamer and Goetz
Neumann suggested:
The most likely cause is a non-responding disk drive or possibly IO channel. Niche causes include a full NBM file if running Netbase or someone running SEGMENTER on SL.PUB.SYS.
Q: A while back there was a posting
concerning the ability of the HP3000 to handle data. That got me thinking. How
fast is the backplane of an HP3000? If I have, say, a 979/400 (4 *180Mhz)
processors. How many SCSI channels would "flood" the system with I/O,
given that each SCSI channel can handle 20Mbits per second?
A: Guy Paul replied:
The 9x9KS architecture has a High Speed Processor Memory Bus rated at 768mb/sec peak. The CPU's access both memory and I/O over this bus. Next is the intermediate HP-High Speed System Connect Bus (HSC) that is rated at 100mb/sec peak. Then comes the HP-PB that is rated at 32mb/sec peak with an aggregate I/O throughput of 64mb/sec on a 2 HP-PB configuration. Below is a rudimentary stick drawing that may help explain.
CPU
Memory
| |
==================== PMB (768mb/sec)
|
BC 10/
|
====================== HP-HSC (100mb/sec)
| |
BC/MFIO 10/4 BC 10/16
| \
=====HP-PB (32mb/sec) =======HP-PB (32mb/sec)
|||| ||||
I/O
cards I/O cards
If you just do the math then 2 FWDSCSI cards@ 20mb/sec would flood the HP-PB but 13mb/sec for a fwscsi card is probably the actual number.
Q: We are having some trouble with
transports stopping and suspect some network table is getting full. Where do we
look?
9:59/121/Output spooler, LDEV #30: IPC error while trying to open a
printer connection socket. IPCCONNECT error 4:
TRANSPORT HAS NOT BEEN INITIALIZED. (SOCKERR 4)
A: Gavin Scott replied:
In NMMGR, go to NETXPORT.GPROT.TCP and see want the maximum number of connections is set to. If it's the default 128 then that's almost certainly your problem and you should boost it to 1024 or more. In any case, make sure it's large enough to account for all network connected sessions, networked printers, web traffic, samba traffic, etc. I've recently seen exactly this error when a system hit the connection limit.
Q: I've been scratching a bunch of old disks
on a test machine, but am having trouble with disks that were volume set
Masters. Members scratch easily because they come up as Loaners but that pesky
Master is always "in invalid state for desired operation." The same
is true for Formatvol.
A: John Clogg replied:
The command (in most cases) is VSCLOSE. That should put the volume set in a LONER state.
Q: We have a SE SCSI connection with 4 tape
drives hanging off of it. The device with the first address on the chain has
failed leaving others unusable. Does anyone have any suggestions about getting
the devices beyond the bad device working?
A: John Burke replied:
For many years I had a similar situation, only in my case there were actually 5 tape drives hanging off a single SE SCSI. I had plenty of drives fail, though I do not recall them ever affecting the operation of the other drives. Anyway, we could always replace them (carefully) by downing all the devices, powering them all off, unhooking the cables, replacing the offending drive, powering them all back up, and, finally, upping all the drives. The HP 3000 never hiccupped even once.
Q: I tried configuring a Seagate ST34573N
disk drive on a 928RX with MPE/iX 5.5. However, SYSGEN gives me a "device
not supported" error message. Should I use a different ID string?Or, do I
need some patches to get ST34573N support on 5.5?
A: John Burke replied:
The most likely cause of this error is that ST34573N is not in IODFAULT.PUB.SYS (it is for MPE/iX 6.5, but I do not have access to a 5.5 system to check). Assuming it is not in your IODFAULT (check this), just use the ID for any SE SCSI disk. DSTAT will read the actual device ID once configured. In this case size (or name) does not matter. If ST34573N is in your IODFAULT (unlikely), then something else is wrong and we need more information - like how did you add the path, etc. Denis St-Amand and Emile Kwan Fong both noted that support for ST34573N is in patch MPELXC3A.
Q: Even though I physically remove a tape,
the system still reports the tape loaded and on line. What is going on here? How can I test for the presence of a
mounted tape with write enabled if the system reports tapes when none are
present?
A: Mark Wonsil replied:
Have you looked at the free utility CHKTAPE from Allegro? http://www.allegro.com/software/hp3000/stuff/CHKTAPE.txt
Version: @(#) ChkTape 20020919
Usage:
chktape devicenumber
Where devicenumber is the device number
(LDEV) of the tape drive.
Returns in CI variable CHKTAPE_RESULT:
0
- Tape is unowned, online, at BOT and writeable
1
- Tape is unowned, online, at BOT andwrite protected
2
- An error occurred. Probably an
invalid device number
3
- Device is not a tape drive
4
- Device is owned by another process
5
- Device is owned by the system
6
- Device is not online
7
- No tape in device
ChkTape must reside in a group.account with PM capability. ChkTape was originally written by Terry Tipton of ROC Software, and has been modified by Stan Sieler of Allegro Consultants.
Q: Has anyone noticed this? What does the
"R" stand for?
JOBNUM
STATE IPRI JIN JLIST INTRODUCED JOB NAME
#J4
EXEC 10S LP TUE
4:26P JOBPAK,MGR.NSD
#J14
EXEC 10R LP FRI 10:16A BACKG,MANAGER.VESOFT
A: Rone Horner replied:
It's because the job have the RESTART option on the job card. Most jobs don't use it unless you want the job to restart completely after a START RECOVERY reboot.
Q: We have implemented a new backup job. It
now wants a second tape. The old job still requires one tape. The only
differences are:
·
The new job
uses a labeled tape
·
The new job
uses the PROGRESS option
·
The new job
redirects the STORE output to a file to be checked for errors
Does anyone see any reason why one of these differences would cause the backup now to span two tapes? We are using only 125m DDS tapes on a DDS3 drive.
A: Guy Paul replied:
Odds are you are switching tapes around the 65,501st file. This is a known issue when using DDS plus labeled media. I believe this is fixed if you use DLT and have patch MPELX94 or its supercede installed but I'm not sure on that point.