Re: Troubleshooting failure of new virtual optical drives on IBM i Host lpar failing to appear on IBM i guest lpar

[DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Two things neither more important than the other.

1) NEVER share optical or tape on the same NWSD as disk. Wye? Because 
you cannot vary the thing off and change it if it has disk on it. If it 
has only optical and tape you can vary off change vary on, test, muck, 
break etc with no harm to the guest.

2) Be vewy vewy careful about DEVICE vs RESOURCE.  On the NWSD when it 
asks what you are sharing or excluding it's asking for RESOURCE names. 
When you delete virtual optical on the host (e.g. DLTDEvD OPTVRT01) and 
then create a new one (e.g. CRTDEVOPT BOB ) it will get a NEW resource 
name such as OPTVRT02. That resource name needs to be in the NWSD NOT "BOB".

        - Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

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

On 4/5/2019 9:23 AM, Rob Berendt wrote:
> I am having an issue seeing virtual optical drives created on my host lpar of IBM i on my guest lpars of IBM i.
> I am told they should just automatically appear.
>
> One of the things IBM had me check was that QAUTOCFG was enabled on the guest.
>
> They also had me delete any existing virtual optical drives on the guest pointing to the host as potential conflicts.
>
> IBM also had me go to the host and run
> WRKNWSD guestname*
> Only one should have
> Allowed device resources . . . . ALWDEVRSC      *UNRSTD
> Restricted device resources  . . RSTDDEVRSC     *NONE
> The others should have:
> Allowed device resources . . . .   *UNRSTD
> Restricted device resources  . .   *ALLOPT
> To change these you should
> - power off the guest.
> - vary off the appropriate NWSD's
> - make the changes.
> - vary on the NWSDs
> - Start the guest
>
> IBM also said that if you ever want to do an OS upgrade from these optical drives, and therefore need to boot from it, then you should do the following
> - change your guest's partition profile on the HMC to change the Tagged I/O's Alternate Restart Device to where the optical drives are served up.  On this lpar it happens to be the same as the load source drive.
> - activate the guest from profile
> - disable any other alternate installation devices you may have created (like the tape drive you originally restored this lpar from) using the steps "Disabling an alternate installation device" found at https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_ibm_i_73/rzarm/sc415304.pdf
>
> I followed these steps.  I also deleted and recreated the virtual optical drives on the host to serve up these image catalogs.  However I do not see any new optical drives on the guest.  Help.
>
> Also:
> Should I change all NWSDs to
> Restricted device resources  . .   *ALLOPT
> And create a new NWSD just for optical only?  This is one way to differentiate between load source and optical.  This would also entail changing the guest lpar profile to tag this new nwsd as the alternate restart device.
>
>
> Rob Berendt
> --
> IBM Certified System Administrator - IBM i 6.1
> Group Dekko
> Dept 1600
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