At 1:15 PM -0800 12/7/00, Donna Garverick wrote:
>well the ugly task of updating our xl store systems (they're
>all on 5.5 at the moment) is peeking over the horizon...and
>it's raising all manner of interesting questions.
I just did a 5.5 PPn -> 6.0 PP2 upgrade last night. Aside from some minor
glitches and the tedium of waiting for a very slow DDS drive, everything
went smoothly. If you follow carefully the documentation in the System
Software Maintenance Manual for 6.0, you should be ok. I would suggest
reading through everything first, before starting anything. Also, please
take note of a potential documentation bug I describe below.
> - hp drilled into our heads (:-) that as of 6.0 mpe was
>going to be real picky about scsi device id's...
> - does this 'pickiness' apply to tape drives too?
I was concerned with the firmware of the DDS drive since this is the same
drive that was shipped with the machine in 1994. Fortunately, section 3.5
of the manual, "Checking Peripherals", says: "If you are already on version
5.0 or 5.5 of the system software, skip this section and proceed to...".
Essentially, this means, "If it's good enough for 5.5, then it's good
enough for 6.0".
( Strangely, though, this whole issue seems moot since elsewhere in the
same manual [section 3.2] it says "If you are running a system version
older than 5.0, you must perform two updates: Update to release 5.0 or
5.5...then update to version 6.0". So, we assume that firmware issues must
be addressed either in the 5.0 or 5.5 update. If that's the case, why even
mention it at all in the 6.0 documentation??? )
Ok, that's just a documentation anomaly.
But here's what I consider to be a documentation bug, and for me this could
have been a serious "gotcha" (but since it was on a system with which I'm
very familiar, I was able to recover, fortunately). If you're going to be
doing a 6.0 upgrade, PLEASE BE CAREFUL ABOUT THIS:
Section 5.1 - Securing and Backing Up the System for Tape Tasks
Step 16: Rename the COMMAND.PUB.SYS file.
:RENAME COMMAND.PUB.SYS, command_name
Ok, that's fine. So next we do all the steps to update the OS, install
PowerPatches and Prod/Subsys. Fine. Then...(hours and hours later)...
Section 6.4 - Setting Passwords, Lockwords, and UDCs
Step 7: Enable UDCs. Purge the COMMAND file created during the process
and rename your temporary COMMAND file.
:PURGE COMMAND.PUB.SYS
:RENAME command_name, COMMAND.PUB.SYS
Step 8: If your users plan to use POSIX features on MPE/iX, and if it is
not already set, set a special UDC.
:SETCATALOG HPPXUDC.PUB.SYS;SYSTEM;APPEND
Step 9: Log on to activate the UDCs.
:HELLO MANAGER.SYS,PUB;HIPRI
I did all this, but then found that the only catalog set at the system
level was HPPXUDC. All the other system-wide catalogs that were supposed to
be there were gone!! The "bug" in the documentation is that I should have
been told to log on again after Step 7 in order to activate the original
catalog first, and *then* do SETCATALOG to append HPPXUDC.
Apparently, when I renamed my temp catalog back to COMMAND.PUB.SYS but
hadn't logged in again, it was not yet an active catalog, so doing
SETCATALOG;APPEND didn't work as expected. Rather than APPENDing HPPXUDC, I
ended up *replacing* all the other system-wide catalogs with it. I don't
know whether this is an MPE bug or a bug in the documentaion, but it has
the potential to cause serious problems.
I mentioned earlier that I was familiar with that particular system, so I
was able to reconstruct what the various catalogs were supposed to be. But
what if I had been at a client site where I didn't have this information? I
would have been "hosed".
So, in summary, if you're going to do an upgrade from 5.5 to 6.0, then
PLEASE ADD STEP 7A to your procedures:
Step 7A: Log on to activate your original UDC's, then proceed to step 8.
Of course, if your users aren't planning to use POSIX features, or if
HPPXUDC is already set on your system, then, as Emily Litella (sp?) used to
say, "Never Mind!"
Happy Upgrading,
Barry Lake [log in to unmask]
Allegro Consultants, Inc. www.bogus.allegro.com
(408)252-2330
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