From: olson@anchor.esd.sgi.com (Dave Olson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: R4K Upgrade Warning!
Date: 8 Jan 93 08:43:40 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA

In <1993Jan8.053452.948@ringer.cs.utsa.edu> senseman@ricky.brainlab.utsa.edu (David M. Senseman) writes:
| Today we received our first R3000 to R4000 Indigo upgrade. 
| The SGI engineers have really done a marvelous job of 
| engineering -- the whole process, including swapping the 
| power supplies was EXTREMELY easy and took less than 10 min.
| 
| The only glitch was came when the system wouldn't boot with the
| following error:
| 
| _______________________________________________________________
| 
| Cannot load scsi(0)disk(0)partition(8)/sash
| Unable to load bootfile; not enough space
| 
| Unable to boot; press any key to continue:
| 
| _______________________________________________________________
| 

Umm, you *did* install the new OS (or if you were already at
405F, reinstall with 'set neweroverride')?  If you didn't, 
of course the system wouldn't boot!  (Yes, I see the answer
below.)

The printed release notes quite definitely mention this.
(They do *NOT* mention the set neweroverride issue, although
it is mentioned in the normal Installation Guide; we should
probably have put a reminder in the release notes about this,
since some people have never experienced this issue.)

| When I explained these symptoms to the SGI Hotline 
| representative, his only suggestion was that the
| partition 8 "had been hosed" and suggested that I
| use "fx" to rewrite the partition info, do a mkfs from
| Admin -- i.e. wipe the disk and start over. 

Are you *sure* you made clear to them that you had just
upgraded the hardware, but not the software?  If so, please
let me know who it was (or the call ID), so I can get them
straightened out (and yes, this includes the set neweroverride
issue).

| This worked except when I did a Restore, the problem 
| returned.

Of course it did, you restored the r3k kernel and standalone
programs...

| Now 8 hours later, I think I see what went wrong.
| The R3K machine was running IRIX 4.0.5F prior to the 
| installation. When I installed the operating system, 
| I didn't set the "neweroverride" to  "on" so the old 
| /unix kernel didn't get updated. My hypothesis is that
| when an R4K Indigo attempts to load an R3K /sash
| it fails with the above error message. Is this correct?
|  During a "Restore" simply put back the old R3K kernel.

Exactly.

| TAKE HOME LESSION?
| If you are currently running IRIX 4.0.5F on an R3K Indigo
| and you get an R4K upgrade kit, make sure you set the
| "neweroverride" to "on" and step through list of
| files and force INST to install eoe1 basic IRIX files.

No reason to do a step.  just type 'i i' to mark all currently
installed subsystems for reinstallation.

| If I'm wrong in this, please correct me -- I'm just trying
| to save some else the problems I had. Clearly the SGI
| Hotline dude hadn't seen this problem before (or he
| wouldn't have had me wipe my disk clean :-(

Everybody in support is supposed to be *very* aware of this
issue.
--
Let no one tell me that silence gives consent,  |   Dave Olson
because whoever is silent dissents.             |   Silicon Graphics, Inc.
    Maria Isabel Barreno                        |   olson@sgi.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi