Re: AS/400e 170 IPL failure

Thanks for the reassurance that I'm not going to find it easy to
accidentally smoke it. I'll still do some reading before trying to
change anything, but I'm now more relaxed about going into the DST for
a look around.

Incidentally, those are both magnificent rooms! All of my bigger boxen
live on furniture dollies, so's I can move them around and
occasionally roll one out to play with.

Before I went any further, I thought I'd better transcribe the license
keys from the working machine. I got the keys using DSPLICKEY and, to
be sure I hadn't missed anything, I also ran a WRKLICINF and
photographed both screens of that.

When I come to compare them, there's a mismatch. DSPLICKEY gives me 13
results, while WRKLICINF gives me only 12. And only 5 items are on
both lists (Including V5R2 of OS/400, thankfully). Further, the 8
items that are unique to DSPLICKEY are all V4R5M0 (including two
instances of 5769SS1 Feature 5050 - Operating System/4) while the 8
items that are unique to WRKLICINF are all V5R2M0 or just plain V5.

Using Display Details in WRKLICINF I see that most of the items unique
to it show "Compliance Type: *Keyed, Usage Type: * Concurrent", though
a couple show *Warning for compliance.

If necessary, I'd be happy to type out all of the product IDs, Feature
numbers etc. but before I subject you all to that I thought it best to
ask: Is this something I should be worried about or is it normal?

Robert

On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 9:34 AM, DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

After booting from CD you have to take deliberate action to toast the
machine. Select Install, Select the drive to install, select 'smoke the
thing' and press F10 to confirm. Many steps in there before Armageddon to
the existing drives.

There was another comment about the disks being out of location. If you are
getting a DST sign on screen with a manual more boot then the disk locations
are OK. Honestly if the load source is in slot 1 or 2 the rest can be
anywhere. IBM i does not care about location only that RAID sets are on the
same RAID controller. Given it's a 170 the only supported configuration is a
single RAID card so it's not possible to put them where they don't belong.
(FYI with SAS disks even the load source just needs to be Ragu.)


- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

www.Frankeni.com
www.iDevCloud.com - Personal Development IBM i timeshare service.
www.iInTheCloud.com - Commercial IBM i Cloud Hosting.

On 9/28/2016 8:12 AM, Robert wrote:

Rob

That statement was in response to Roberto's comment which I took to
mean making a copy of the OS from the "working" machine.

I'm familiar with burning ISOs to optical media, though admittedly
I've mostly only done so to make install disks for Windows and various
flavours of Linux - I don't see this being much different. Windows 7
even has a built in utility for ripping the ISO to a bootable disc.

The reason that I'm holding off doing so is concern that, if I just
burn an I_Base disc and blindly D from it on the "toast" machine, I
might risk inadvertently wiping the keys that I'm trying to recover.
Previous comments that the drives are read-only when you do a D IPL
argue against that, but I still feel like I should do some more
reading before attempting it, so that I at least have some kind of a
roadmap for what I'm proposing to do and what I should expect to see
while doing it.

WRKOPTVOL is new to me, but you can rest assured that I'll read up on
it. At this stage, though, it seems more relevant to the "working"
machine than the "toast" machine.

Thanks
Robert

On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 6:47 AM, Rob Berendt <rob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<snip>
On making my own media, it turns out that the 170s only have CD-ROM
drives, not CD-RWs. So, at best, I could only create tapes - if I had
some tapes. Unless there's a way of doing it remotely, from a PC over
TCP/IP - but that would be a separate discussion.
</snip>

Download the ISO file to a PC with a burner attached.
Burn a CD on the PC.
Be careful not to think of it like burning a bunch of files to a disc so
that you can play them in your car. Think of it more like taking a CD
and
burning it to another CD.
When you're done your PC should be able to read that CD and not see the
.iso file but instead see the contents of the .iso file.
The 170 should be able to read that. The 170 will not see the .iso file.
It will, instead, see the contents of that .iso file.

For example, when using virtual optical you may see files like this
Directory . . . . : /fixes/cume
Object link Type
CUME_1.bin STMF
CUME_2.bin STMF
CUME_3.bin STMF
CUME_4.bin STMF
And they could be .bin or .iso

But when you look at them with WRKOPTVOL you see the contents of each
'disc'.
Perhaps comparable to seeing a .zip file vs seeing the contents of the
.zip file.

Maybe the whole concept of virtual optical is a little past where you're
ready yet though.


Rob Berendt
--
IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM i 6.1
Group Dekko
Dept 1600
Mail to: 2505 Dekko Drive
Garrett, IN 46738
Ship to: Dock 108
6928N 400E
Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com





From: Robert <robert626001@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 09/27/2016 11:08 PM
Subject: Re: AS/400e 170 IPL failure
Sent by: "MIDRANGE-L" <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx>



Roberto

Thanks for that background. It led me to a couple of documents (links
below) from which I learned the following:

My disk system is either RAID 5 or mirrored.
I have either one array or two.
I have either one ASP or two.
A RAID 5 array requires a minimum of four drives.

From memory (it's not in front of me right now) the drive in the
expansion chassis of "toast" box is a different type to those in the
main chassis. It seems unlikely to me that IBM would mix drive types
in a single array.

Given that the "working" box has four drives in the main chassis and
three in the expansion chassis, I'm inclined to suspect that what I
have in there is one complete RAID 5 array and one degraded RAID 5
array. Naturally, I'll need to fire it up to see if I can figure out
how confirm that, but I think that QSRV has the necessary privileges.
I'll also need to do some more reading - I'm not clear on how ASPs map
to arrays(or vice versa) and what redundancy arrangements are in
place.

In summary, my main hope for retrieving the keys from the "toast"
machine is that ASP1 may be found, complete, on the four drive array
in the primary chassis. I'm not ready to give up on that, yet, though
I'll concede the possibility that the reading mentioned above might
require me to.

Does that sound plausible?

On making my own media, it turns out that the 170s only have CD-ROM
drives, not CD-RWs. So, at best, I could only create tapes - if I had
some tapes. Unless there's a way of doing it remotely, from a PC over
TCP/IP - but that would be a separate discussion.

Robert

On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 6:38 PM, Roberto José Etcheverry Romero
<yggdrasil.raiker@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Robert,

Some background on how IBM i stores things, it uses an ASP (Auxiliary
Storage Pool), and within that (and technically, within the main storage
(RAM) as well) you have a one level storage. There are no volumes, no
partitions, no nothing. That means that unfortunately, if you have dead

or

missing drives, the ASP is gone for good (unless you have a LOT of time

and

expertise on your hands, i recall someone on this list reading the

QSECOFR

password from the load source drive on a linux machine after a lot of
tinkering).
The second 170 i think will be a source of spares for the one that

works.

If you can't find the media you might be able to create your own media,
look into that, if you have enough access to the system you might be

able

to create iso images to reinstall the machine...

Best luck with that.


On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 7:37 PM, Robert <robert626001@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thanks for the links, Rob.

It sounds like I need to bump into one of those people, in the pub
(physical or virtual). I guess I'd need to find the PTFs, too.

I'm now wondering (re the "toast" machine) whether it would be safe to
D from the LIC CD, get to DST, stop the array with missing drives and
power off. If I could do that without harming the current
installation, that might let me IPL and photographically recover the
keys for that machine too.

I'm a little hesitant, though as the last thing I want to do is
inadvertently erase the keys!

Robert

On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 5:02 PM, Rob Berendt <rob@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I know people who keep old copies of the OS on CD. Let's say for

quick

upgrades in the event of mergers and acquisitions.


Rob Berendt
--
IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM i 6.1
Group Dekko
Dept 1600
Mail to: 2505 Dekko Drive
Garrett, IN 46738
Ship to: Dock 108
6928N 400E
Kendallville, IN 46755
http://www.dekko.com





From: Roberto José Etcheverry Romero <yggdrasil.raiker@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion

<midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

Date: 09/27/2016 05:53 PM
Subject: Re: AS/400e 170 IPL failure
Sent by: "MIDRANGE-L" <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx>



If you have the keys photographed but you don't have any other access

to

the system. Try to find some v5r2 installation media and just break

the

entire machine. Install from 0 and you'll have a v5r2 machine up and
running. It's a nice learning experience, but if you don't have the

media

it'll be difficult.

Best Regards,

Roberto

On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 6:42 PM, James H. H. Lampert <
jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Sounds to me like what you really have is one functioning 170, and

one

source of spare 170 parts.

Which, if you think about it, is not a bad combination.

--
JHHL

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