Hello 3000-L Listers:
Recently there has been a lot of postings (many by me) regarding
Patch/iX and Stage/iX. One of our fellow listers sent me a private
e-mail messgae talking about a Patch/iX error that occurred when
creating a staging area. This same issue has come up a couple of
times, including one of my previous postings to 3000-L (but it was
burried in the middle of a much larger message).
Attatched is a copy of the reply that I sent to Joe regarding this
issue. I would specifically like to call attention to a couple of
things.
* This message contains information on the history of the problem,
provided mainly as background information. This history includes a
description of the original workaround for the problem.
* The orginal problem is now FIXED.
* Since the problem is FIXED you should not see the same symptom. If
you do see the same symptom today, it is probably a different
problem and therefore you should not use the original workaournd
unless directed to do so by the HPRC.
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 14:47:13 +0000
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Stage/iX
> I have used Patch/iX-Stage/iX 3 times, to install 5.5 EXP2 on 3 9X7
> systems using the "stage to disk" option. In each case the process
> terminated with (among other things): "ERROR: Patch/iX failed to create
> the stage/tape (PMERR 76)". The STAGELOG file contained the message
> "Error: Incomplete staging area "(name)". Cannot validate. (STAGEMAN
> 1094)" .
This problem is definitely fixed in any of the recent versions of
Patch/iX. I posted an explanation of this on the 3000-L list so I
might be repeating myself. Here is the history of the problem.
In testing Patch/iX and Stage/iX, one of our testers discovered the
following. If you did <BREAK> Patch/iX and :ABORT while Patch/iX is
in the middle of putting the patched files in the staging area, you
would be left with a "partial" staging area. Since the staging area
did not contain all of the necessary patched files, you should not
be able to use the staging area. Unfortunately, if you went into
STAGEMAN and did a "validate" command, STAGEMAN would not object and
would go ahead and "validate" that staging area. If you then tried to
boot from the stagaing area (by doing a "set" and ISL> statr) you
would get unpredictable (ie: usually bad) results.
The problem was that STAGEMAN had no way of telling when Patch/iX was
done putting patched files into the staging area. So we invented the
"complete" command. Now Patch/iX issues the "complete" command once
it is finished. If it never gets to the point where it issues the
"complete" command (for any reason icludeing <BREAK> :ABORT or some
kind of runtime error) then STAGEMAN will not "validate" the staging
area.
This enhancement to Patch/iX and Stage/iX was submitted late in the
build cycle for 5.5. Shortly after all of this, a fix for a totally
separate problem in Patch/iX was done. Unfortunately, the person who
did the fixed used a version of the Patch/iX source that did not
contain the enhance ment described above. So as a result one of the
early 5.5 versions of Patch/iX did not contain the fix where Patch/iX
issued the "complete" command when it was done staging files. This
caused STAGEMAN to complain with the error you listed above.
> In the update manual shipped with EXP 2, in the Stageman error
> messages, the recommended action is to use the COMPLETE command to
> mark the stage as complete. This seems to take care of the problem,
> when you restart the Patch/iX session it finishes successfully. The
> patches have been installed & running fine for a couple of months now.
The manual for EXP 2, contained the full documentation for STAGEMAN
including the "complete" command and all of the error messages.
Therefore you were able to fugure out the that you needed to do a
"complete" command (and also apparently able to figure out that you
had to go into "expert mode" by doing an "expert on" command first).
For the most part this indicated that things worked about as good as
possible. I am pleased that the documentation combined with the
STAGELOG file gave you enough information to figure out how to work
around the problem (which obviously should not have happened in the
first place).
Since Patch/iX was, in your case, actually done putting patched files
into the staging area (but just did not issue the "complete"
command), there was actually no problem. The course of action you
took was totally correct and there would be no reason for the
patch(es) to have any problems from an installation point-of-view.
NOTE: The problem you experienced is now fixed. All of the recent
releases of Patch/iX have the code in them to issue the "complete"
command. This means that you should not see the error "ERROR: Patch/iX
failed to create the stage/tape (PMERR 76)" unless Patch/iX actually
aborts for some reason (and the staging area is therefore not marked
as "complete". In the case where the staging are is REALLY not
complete, I would not want for you to mark it as complete using the
"complete" command. If you do, then you will "fool" STAGEMAN into
thinking it is OK to "validate" and use the staging area, and you
will get unpredictable (ie: usually bad) results.
The "complete" command is an "expert mode" command. It is documented
for a specific reason. Any customer that wants to use "expert mode"
to modify a staging area in one of the supported ways (which I
discussed in a separate posting) would need to use the "complete"
command once they are done with their modifications, prior to
"validating" and using the staging area. Anytime a staging area that
is marked as "complete" is modified (eg: if you add a file into the
staging area via the "stagefile" expert mode command), that staging
area is marked as "incomplete", thus the "complete" command would
have to be issued.
Basically, if you are not using "expert mode" to customize your
staging area, you should never need to use the "comnplete" command.
If you see the error described above and you are not using expert
mode to customize your staging area, then there is a bug in Patch/iX
or you aborted Patch/iX in the middle of creating the staging area,
and that staging area should not be marked as "complete".
Scott McClellan
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