Preparing the System Disk

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HP OpenVMS Alpha Version 7.3-2 Upgrade and Installation...

Before Upgrading the OpenVMS Alpha Operating System

Shadowing Environment

Ensuring You Have a Recent FEEDBACK.DAT File

Preparing the System Disk

The following sections describe how to prepare the system disk for the upgrade. The operations include the following:

Examining the system disk

Checking the SYSCOMMON directories

Checking the size of the system disk

Returning authorization and AGEN$INCLUDE files to the system disk

Verifying system parameters

Examining the System Disk

Examine and repair (if necessary) the system disk using the ANALYZE/DISK_STRUCTURE command. (See the HP OpenVMS System Management Utilities Reference Manual: A--L for more information about this command.) Use the following procedure:

Analyze the system disk for inconsistencies and errors in the file structure by entering the following command:
```
$ ANALYZE/DISK_STRUCTURE SYS$SYSDEVICE
```
Ignore the following message:
```
%ANALDISK-I-OPENQUOTA, error opening QUOTA.SYS
```

If you find any other errors on the system disk, repair the errors by entering the following command:
```
$ ANALYZE/DISK_STRUCTURE/REPAIR SYS$SYSDEVICE
```

Checking the SYSCOMMON Directories

For the upgrade to be successful, the SYSCOMMON directories in all system roots must be aliases (or hard links) for the VMS$COMMON directory. To check whether this is the case, execute the following DIRECTORY/FILE_ID commands and compare the displayed file identifiers to ensure that they are all the same.

$ DIRECTORY/FILE_ID/NOHEADING/NOTRAILING device:[000000]VMS$COMMON.DIR
$ DIRECTORY/FILE_ID/NOHEADING/NOTRAILING device:[SYS*]SYSCOMMON.DIR

If you are booted from the system disk that you will be upgrading, you can use SYS$SYSDEVICE as the device name in these commands, as follows:

$ DIRECTORY/FILE_ID/NOHEADING/NOTRAILING SYS$SYSDEVICE:[000000]VMS$COMMON.DIR
$ DIRECTORY/FILE_ID/NOHEADING/NOTRAILING SYS$SYSDEVICE:[SYS*]SYSCOMMON.DIR

If you did not boot from the system disk that you will be upgrading, mount the disk to be upgraded and specify the actual device name in the command. For example, if the system disk to be upgraded is mounted on DKA100, you would use commands similar to the following:

$ DIRECTORY/FILE_ID/NOHEADING/NOTRAILING DKA100:[000000]VMS$COMMON.DIR
$ DIRECTORY/FILE_ID/NOHEADING/NOTRAILING DKA100:[SYS*]SYSCOMMON.DIR

Output from the first command should list a single file. Output from the second command should list one file for each system root on the disk. Check whether the file ID is the same for all of the listed files and take action as follows:

If all the file IDs are the same, continue with the procedure described in the next section.

If all the file IDs are not the same, this system disk does not have the directory structure that OpenVMS requires, and the upgrade will not succeed.

Correcting this problem requires detailed knowledge about how the problem was created. There is no general solution. Because it can be difficult to correct this problem, it is often easier to reinstall OpenVMS (and any layered products) on a new system disk.

Checking the Size of the System Disk

It is difficult to determine in advance how many blocks of disk space you will need for the upgrade. It depends on how many files you have on the target disk already and on how many components you select during the upgrade procedure. However, the following information will help:

The maximum amount of disk space you will need is approximately 675,000 blocks, but your system might use substantially less.

After you select the components you want installed on the system for the upgrade, the upgrade procedure calculates whether you have enough disk space, displaying the number of available blocks and the number required for the upgrade. If the procedure determines that your disk does not have enough space to perform the upgrade, it displays a message to alert you and allows you to terminate the upgrade so you can create more disk space and try the upgrade again.

To see how much space you have on the system disk, enter the following command:

$ SHOW DEVICE SYS$SYSDEVICE

Returning Authorization and AGEN$INCLUDE Files to the System Disk

If you have placed authorization and AGEN$INCLUDE files on disks other than the system disk, the upgrade procedure will not find these files. This is because the other disks will not be mounted during the upgrade. In addition, the logical names you have set up to point to these files will not be defined. The following sections explain how to make these files available to the upgrade procedure.

Authorization Files

The authorization files include the following:

SYSUAF.DAT

NETPROXY.DAT

RIGHTSLIST.DAT

If they are not located in the SYS$SYSTEM directory, make sure they are returned there before you upgrade. You can move them back to the original locations after the upgrade is complete.

AGEN$INCLUDE Files

If you use the AGEN$INCLUDE feature in SYS$SYSTEM:MODPARAMS.DAT to include files containing additional parameter settings, and the files that are being included are not on the system disk, then do the following before upgrading:

Move the files to the system disk.

Update the AGEN$INCLUDE entries to reflect the new locations of these files. For these entries, do not use logical names that you defined in SYS$STARTUP:SYLOGICALS.COM or elsewhere for your normal startup procedure. When you boot the system from the OpenVMS operating system CD-ROM for an upgrade, your normal startup procedure is not run, and so these logical names will not be defined for the upgrade. In addition, when you first boot the upgraded system, a special startup procedure is used.

After the upgrade is complete, you can move these included files back to their original locations. If you do so, remember to re-set the AGEN$INCLUDE entries in SYS$SYSTEM:MODPARAMS.DAT.

Verifying System Parameters

Verify (and modify if necessary) system parameters, described as follows. (If necessary, see the chapter entitled "Managing System Parameters" in the HP OpenVMS System Manager's Manual, Volume 2: Tuning, Monitoring, and Complex Systems for more information about modifying system parameters.) Any system parameters that you modified and did not enter in SYS$SYSTEM:MODPARAMS.DAT are lost during the upgrade. To retain these parameters, enter their names and the values that you have in use for them in SYS$SYSTEM:MODPARAMS.DAT. (When AUTOGEN runs after the upgrade, it uses the values in SYS$SYSTEM:MODPARAMS.DAT.)

For example, if you modified GBLPAGES by 128 pages above the default, add the following line to SYS$SYSTEM:MODPARAMS.DAT:

ADD_GBLPAGES=128

During an upgrade, everything is set back to the default. Use current feedback.

If you do modify system parameters, note the following:

In general, you should allow AUTOGEN to calculate system parameters. You can hardcode values (such as GBLPAGES=value), but doing so overrides AUTOGEN and might not allow it to set an optimal value based on observed usage.

Whenever possible, use MIN_parameter values (such as MIN_GBLPAGES) to set a minimum value. AUTOGEN will use this value as a starting point and increase it if necessary. It will also adjust related parameters, unless they are hardcoded, in which case information will be provided in the AGEN$PARAMS.REPORT file. Use MAX_parameter values to set a maximum value when it is necessary to limit a parameter to a known maximum value.

Enter numeric values as integers, without commas (for example, 10000). Enter alphabetic characters in lower or uppercase.

HP recommends that you include comments in the MODPARAMS.DAT file indicating who changed the value, when it was done, and why it was done. An exclamation point serves as a comment starter and can appear anywhere on a line. The following is an example illustrating the modifications recommended in the preceding bulleted items:
```
! the following changes made by K.Newcomb on 9/20/03
!
SWAPFILE=0                    ! don't re-size the SWAPFILE on AUTOGEN runs
MIN_gblsections=750           ! required for DECwindows MOTIF
MIN_NPAGEDYN=2750000            ! set npagedyn to a min of 2.75 million
```

For more information on using AUTOGEN as recommended, see Running AUTOGEN to Tune the System.

If your system was upgraded previously, a new SYS$SYSTEM:MODPARAMS.DAT file was created then. This file has comments and possibly duplicated entries that were created during that upgrade. If you upgrade again, SYS$SYSTEM:MODPARAMS.DAT can become unnecessarily large and potentially confusing. HP recommends that you edit and reorganize SYS$SYSTEM:MODPARAMS.DAT before you upgrade again.

On a cluster system disk, MODPARAMS.DAT should exist in SYS$SYSROOT:[SYSEXE] for each root. You must edit MODPARAMS.DAT as necessary for each root.

Shadowing Environment

Ensuring You Have a Recent FEEDBACK.DAT File