From: Peter Sherwood (petersherwood@microway.com)
Date: Fri Aug 30 2002 - 12:50:23 EDT
Thanks go to the following people for providing me with potential solutions:
jb@jbacher
alan@cpqcorp
iglesias@uci
tom@kednos
jay.vlack@hp (solution I used, Thanks again Jay!)
domains were nixed for obvious reasons (.com, .net & .edu were snipped
if you want to reach these people ;-)
Not too long ago nor far away Peter Sherwood wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I have the (*)pleasure of supporting Alpha PC164LX (21164 CPU)
> computers.
[snip]
> Customers want to migrate from one OS version to another from
[snip]
> When migrating [snip] it is necessary at times to run
> the MBR zapping command:
[snip]
> Long Story Shortened:
>
> what I am looking for is the equivalent "dd ..." command
> (or ability to zap the MBR)
> during a Tru64 UNIX installation
Thank you to all who dug deep within the recesses of grey matter to pull
out possible solutions.
Here, IMHO, is the quickest and easiest solution:
Jay Vlack of HP wins the KISS approach and the one I used and passed
along to a customer (who succeeded rather nicely):
On alpha systems one must begin the OS installation at the SRM and
therefore it makes the best sense to zap the MBR at this point.
Four commands accomplished this quite nicely:
>>>chmod +w dka0.0.0.5.0 <-- make the drive writable)
>>>exer -a w dka0.0.0.5.0 & <-- run in background or you can't ... )
>>>show_status <-- repeatedly)
>>>init <-- to reboot)
NOTES:
1) ensure you add the "&" on the end of the "exer" command to send it
into the background or else you cannot run the "show_status" command
repeatedly to check bytes written. (Ctrl C breaks out if you forget the &)
2) BYTE WRITTEN needs to be greater than or equalt to 8 megabytes
3) show_status will need to be re-run several times (the easiest
approach is to type it once and then do the <up arrow> <Enter/Return>
keys repeatedly).
4) some SRM versions will allow you to use the ALIAS name (i.e. dka0)
instead of the full name (i.e. dka0.0.0.5.0) on the "exer ..." command
line. SRM 5.8-1 is one such SRM. I haven't tested any others, yet.
PS: I tried to ignore these older Alpha PC164 computer systems but it
wasn't possible. "If you can't fight 'em, join 'em" is what I've had to
adopt. So, if I have erred miserably, please go easy on me. I've only
started supporting them in the last few months.
Sample (wrap-line mangeled) "show_status":
ID Program Device Pass Hard/Soft Bytes Written Bytes Read
-------- ------------ ------------ ------ --------- -------------
-----------
00000001 idle system 0 0 0 0 0
000003c exer_kid dka0.0.0.17.0 0 0 0 8087040 0
(Jay's sample not mine ;-)
-- Peter Sherwood <petersherwood@microway.com> Technical Support Direct: 508-732-5542 Main: 508-746-7341 Fax: 508-746-4678 Microway, Inc. - "Technology You Can Count On" http://www.microway.com/
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