4D/20 Initialization.

[Dave Olson]

jcmiller at hydra.unm.edu (Jeff Miller) writes:


|         Hello again to all ye netters!
| 
|         I was wondering if someone out there could brief me on how to
| install 3.1 on a 4D/20 with an unformatted SCSI drive (ancient, but
| but not dead yet 8-) I have looked in the manuals that I have, but
| I haven't seen anything about formatting new HD's. I need to know
| environment variables (setenv 's) and anything else pertinent to the
| installation. Any pertinent information would be greatly apreciated!!
| 

I'll refer you to the release notes that came with your tapes for the
installation instructions, they are much more complete than anything
I could type in.

To initialize a disk (of any type) you use the fx program.  If it is
the only disk on the system, then you need to use the standalone version
of fx.  If you have another disk you can boot from, then set the drive ID to
some other ID and use the kernel version of fx; other than starting
it, everything is the same in both versions.

Pretty much everything below is in the fx man page, by the way.

To boot the standalone version for the PI, insert your eoe1 tape, then
type (to the PROM monitor; see installation notes on how to get there):
	>> tpsc(0,2)fx.IP6 -x
Where 2 is the unit # of the tape drive (normally 2 on PI's).  If you
aren't sure, then use the 'hinv' command to find out the ID.

The -x gives you 'expert' mode, which allows you to do more things that
will destroy any data you have on the disk.

When fx comes up, it asks you for the controller (0), and the drive ID.
If you have more than one drive, be VERY sure you are using the correct
drive!

After that, it does an inquiry to find the type, and then runs the
'send diagnostic' command to try to be sure the drive is at internally
consistent.

It will then try to read the volume header, and in the case of a new or
'foreign' drive, not find it, so it will create one and tell you about
it.  It will also do a variety of mode sense commands to determine the
drive parameters, so it can figure out a reasonable partition layout.

Assuming the drive was working before, you shouldn't need to change any
of the drive parameters, so you should be able to use the 'exercise'
menu selection to run a write-compare pass on the drive with no problems.
If you do get problems, you might want to try this:
	/label/set/param
and answer 'yes' to the use default parameters question, then do
	/format
and answer 'current' to the parameter question.  If the drive formats
correctly, then try exercising it again.  If it still doesn't work, then
chances are your drive isn't close enough to what we expect the drive
to support as regards the CCS (common command set).

Finally, if everything works, you will need to write the volume header
out before exitting fx, by either doing
	/label/sync
or simply
	/exit
and then answering yes to the "label info has changed... write out changes"
question.

At this point, you should have a drive with the SGI volume header, which
contains the partition layout, etc., and you should be able to start
installing the software on the drive.  If you changed the ID, then you
probably want to change it back to ID 1 before starting the install.


One final warning.  The standalone code does not use synchronous SCSI,
and the kernel does.  If this causes problems with your drive (it does
with some), then read the comment at the end of /usr/sysgen/master.d/scsi
and change the variable scsi_syncenable, then build a new kernel with
/etc/init.d/autoconfig, then reboot.
--

	Dave Olson

Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.