AIX

Hello,

I have an older RS/6000 system and it is not booting. It just keeps rebooting. If I try to put in the 5.3 install media it just sits at Starting Software...Please wait

I searched other posts that say to go into maintenance mode from SMS menu and check if the filesystems are full and/or corrupted and to unmirror them if they're mirrored. My SMS menu does not have a Maintenance mode that I know of. I have Config, Multiboot, Utilities, and Exit. I did go in and see that there are two 5gb drives on it. I also tried to use a diagnostic cd but it wouldn't boot either. I was able to get to an OK prompt but it didn't seem to recognize any commands.

It has firmware TCP99006. I think the firmware should be updated to TCP05287 but I can no longer find it on the IBM site. Any help and or suggestions with this would be greatly appreciated.

http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp...firmware/lgjsn

Top box - 7043-150

TCP09267 is the latest and only available version.

TPCYYDDD means 2009 day 267, go to the latest, earlier versions are just older and have more bugs so don't bother looking for them.

As soon as you can install the rest of any firmware that applies - adapters, devices, Etc.

HTH

Thanks for the info. I got the BIN file but can't get it extracted to put the .img file in a floppy. I don't have access to another AIX system. I tried to do it on RedHat but that didn't work. It said it couldn't execute the binary.

it is possible that 5.3 is not booting with firmware from 1999.

At the moment I am replacing a fan on my 43P-140 - so maybe I should liik for newer firmware as well (although this system will never go farther that 5.1).

My first suggestion, thus, is to see if you know anyone who as an older version of AIX - 4.3.3 would be best considering the firmware.

2 5G disks - and firmware from 99 - was a bigish system in it's prime!

---------- Post updated at 03:02 PM ---------- Previous update was at 12:58 PM ----------

When you go to the fixcentral site, there is also a DOS format, that is packaged as a .EXE.

I believe this creates a floppy that can be used to boot and update the system.

If it does not boot, then it is press F1 while booting (or ASCII character 1 when using serial port).

e.g., this .EXE may be what you need: 7043150I.EXE

Hope this helps! (as I am going to do the same, but for the 43P-140 as I mentioned above)

---------- Post updated at 07:55 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:02 PM ----------

Two problems with the .EXE file.

No longer compatible with a modern version of windows; who has a floppy drive these days - to write the output to?

so apparently it was just the firmware. I upgraded the firmware to TCP09267 and after that 5.3 installed just fine. Makes me believe that if I had tried to install 4.3 it would have worked right off the bat. All I have to do now is mirror rootvg. Thanks for the help!

I am sure it would have booted 4.X.Y, maybe even 5.1 - best news is that it is working.

mirroring rootvg - if still looking at that I hope the following may help.

mirrorvg -S rootvg hdisk1 (background sync)

mirrorvg -s rootvg hdisk1 (no sync, must run syncvg later, see below)

Normally, I run the second command (with -s) so that I can specify some arguments to syncvg - especially the number of LPs to update in parallel with -P.

So, my preferred commands to mirror rootvg (any vg actually) is:

Code:

mirrorvg -s vgSomething SpareDiskX
syncvg -P 2|4 vgSomething &

This thread somehow slipped by my attention, so sorry for the late answer.

You can't install AIX 5.3 on a 43P, because the 43P is an "rspc" (RS/6000 with PCI bus) architecture with a PPC-603 processor and the support for these systems was dropped from the kernel in 5.2. The latest version you can install is 5.1. I have two 43P myself and this is what they are running.

I hope this helps.

bakunin