Steve writes (amongst other things)
----------
Some side notes about the upgrade. Both Unison and NDS (Roadrunner and
JobPak,
respectively) assured us that we did not need any special secret decoder
word
to use their products on the new platform. Both lied, causing us extra
grief.
and explaining why we didn't get a full backup Saturday night. If you
plan an
upgrade, beat up your contact at these companies until they give you to
word!
------------
<rant>
I can't begin to tell the list how much I HATE copy protection schemes.
They have caused me more grief, damage and lost time than any other
facet of HP3000 Software. They are almost ALWAYS embarrasingly badly
implemented, never supported properly, and I'm sure they have never
really prevented any software theft in the HP3000 environment. I always
find myself in a situation where I have to wait a twelve hour/weekend
cycle for a stupid password or unlocking key.
I strongly believe that these idiotic schemes exist only to protect the
tier based pricing which some suppliers rely on.
</rave>
My deepest sympathies to Steve - I have been there, done that, wear the
scars.
I appeal to all software vendors to abandon copy protection schemes
based on passwords and serial numbers. I promise to report anyone I find
that has stolen your software :)
Regards
Neil
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Miller [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, July 14, 1997 4:29 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Drive Crashed Questions
>
> It's probably too late to help my now foundering career :) but for
> purely
> academic reasons I ask the following, curious as to what I did wrong.
>
> Over July 4th, we upgraded out 967 to a 987, and added several new 4
> gig
> drives. This went remarkably well. On Sunday, though, I noticed two
> weekend
> jobs had died with sector errors on LDEV 15 (a new drive). This
> seemed like a
> bad thing. A call to the RC confirmed it, and someone was dispatched
> from the
> local HP office with a new drive.
>
> Here's where I tried to get creative. Since we had not run a
> successful backup
> since the reload (more on that below), I faced the prospect of
> reloading to
> Friday's full, and rerunning all Saturday's production (and telling
> users they
> had lost their work). Then I thought of that great utility MPEX.
>
> Since so many jobs ran and only two errored, I felt very few files on
> LDEV 15
> might actually be hosed. So I did a LISTF @[log in to unmask]@ (ONDEVICE(15)), which
> gave me
> a 115 page listing. I then used MPEX to ALTFILE @[log in to unmask]@
> (ONDEVICE(15));LDEV=16
> to move the files off. I expected only the damaged files would fail,
> and that
> appeared to be the case. And I was pleased to see that almost all the
> damaged
> files were non-production, or static production that had not changed.
>
> I seemed to be hitting it lucky! I did another LISTF @[log in to unmask]@
> (ONDEVICE(15))
> after the ALTFILE ended, and it only showed those files that had
> errored...a
> few pages! So, HP pulled the bad drive, put in the new. We added it
> with
> VOLUTIL and brought the system back up.
>
> Guess what. Nothing was working. We were getting errors on files
> that were
> not even listed as being on LDEV 15. The error was VOLUME SET NOT
> MOUNTED
> MOUNT PROBLEM FSERR 113 on files like HPPXUDC.PUB.SYS. We called the
> response
> center, who claimed parts of the file were still on LDEV 15. When we
> mentioned
> using MPEX the (now rude) RC person said 'In that case this call is
> over' (does
> HP not like MPEX??). MPEX never listed any extent of HPPXUDC on LDEV
> 15.
>
> Soooo...any ideas why this did not work? Could it have worked. We
> ended up
> with the reload and rerun of production.
>
> Some side notes about the upgrade. Both Unison and NDS (Roadrunner
> and JobPak,
> respectively) assured us that we did not need any special secret
> decoder word
> to use their products on the new platform. Both lied, causing us
> extra grief.
> and explaining why we didn't get a full backup Saturday night. If you
> plan an
> upgrade, beat up your contact at these companies until they give you
> to word!
>
> Thanks for any help.
>
> Steve
> [log in to unmask]
|
