[ttw]

Been trying to install AIX 5.3 on an old RS/6000 system. I understand it's a 7046 B50 system but my knowledge on pSeries hardware is poor.

i have upgraded the firmware for the 5.3 install however it still appears to fail.

i simply go through the motions selecting a complete overwrite of the system and everything appears to proceed. however, during the install process i get a message about the following missing installation sets

devices.isa_sio.8042
devices.isa_sio.CRUS.CS4236B
devices.isa_sio.IBM.tablet-port
devices.isa_sio.fdc
devices.isa_sio.parallel
devices.isa_sio.pnpPNP.b007
devices.isa_sio.serial
devices.isa_sio.sound
devices.pci.14104100
devices.pci.72110200
devices.pci.ethernet
devices.pci.pciclass.010000
devices.pci.pciclass.020000
devices.pci.pciclass.040000
devices.pci.scsi
devices.pci.video

the system doesn't have a video card and i am installing over the serial line. but i have looked on the CD and these definately don't exist.

after the install, instead of going through licensing and basic system configuration it simply boots to the console login. any attempt to login fails without any console messages.

i can boot to the new system via the install CD. when i look at 'ifconfig -l' i only get the local loopback interface; which corrolates to the missing 'devices.pci.ethernet' line above (although i realise this is a fairly vauge connection at this point).

at this point i have no idea how to proceed. certainaly it would be good to know if AIX 5.3 can be installed on the 7046 B50 system (as suggested by the BIOS upgrade docs)? and if so has anyone completed this successfully?

i am not adverse to manually patching and finishing the install from the CD recovery console but don't want to start trying to dig through this until someone with more experience can say "worth a try" or "not worth a try".

any hints or pointers would be much appreciated.

[kierong]

Your hardware must be "CHRP" hardware and your microcode must be at the latest level, check out the link below for other relevant information

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/pseries/v5r3/topic/com.ibm.aix.resources/RELNOTES/5303_base_relnotes.htm

[ttw]

double checked that doc and the 7046-B50 appears to be supported as a CHRP platform. the only additional note was around booting from UDF media -- i'm using the CD (ISO) but used the openprom command anyway. the installation is identical and results in the same problem

reboot to console login with no base configuration. any attempt to login simply returns the login prompt again. note, i can boot to volume group from the CD.

my current feeling is that there is some minor variation in my hardware platform that is causing it to fail (i.e. network interface missing when i boot via CD). wouldn't really expect that from IBM, from Dell or HP, sure, but not with IBM. anyway, going to try and re-install 5.2 and see what the story is there ... prehaps an upgrade will succeed.

thanks for the suggestion / reply

[cdn_borne]

I have installed 5.3 on my B50. The CD's I used are from 2005.

[ttw]

cdn_borne,

if there's any chance i could meet you on irc or jabber channel then it would be great. basically i want to cross reference your install with mine.

i had a number of missing package errors during the install and when i boot from the CD i don't have a network interface. i tried

# ifconfig ent0

but it returns an error saying that if_ent is not available. if i do the same with "en0" it says that there is a binary format error (assume this is a 64bit adapter).

my apologies for the ignorance around pseries hardware but always seem to arrive from IBM with everything i needed in the past. who knew i would ever miss corporate purchasing and delivery processes?

[wombat]

Hi all,

I seem to be getting a similar problem with a 7043-150 installing AIX 5300-03 10/2005. As far as i can tell the install seems to go fine but when it reboots i am unable to get past the login prompt.

I have upgraded the system firmware to the latest level before i started
I can boot from CD and access the OS

I had thought it was a AIX 5.3 problem so i tried AIX 5.2 but got the same problem, then AIX 4.3.3 and got the same problem.....

any ideas?
does anyone know where the install log is kept?

cheers

[gomeznimrod]

What does the following command output?

# lsdev -Cc adapter

[jim@nordisk]

Are you sure you login enabled from tty is set to yes. If I remember correctly on most installs the login from tty has been dissabled. (Hey I don't know why it just happens). What you need to do is boot the install media into maintenance mode and reset the log in from tty in the smit devices file to enable. That should fix your problem. (Been there, done that, got the tee shirt>)

[wombat]

Originally Posted by jim@nordisk

Are you sure you login enabled from tty is set to yes. If I remember correctly on most installs the login from tty has been dissabled. (Hey I don't know why it just happens). What you need to do is boot the install media into maintenance mode and reset the log in from tty in the smit devices file to enable. That should fix your problem. (Been there, done that, got the tee shirt>)

Thanks Jim got me on the right path...
for some reason login from tty was disabled but that wasnt the only problem "clocal" was missing from the run modes.

To fix it i booted from CD in maintenace and created a script to change the settings

chdev  -l tty0 -P -a runmodes=hupcl,cread,brkint,icrnl,opost,tab3,onlcr,isig,icanon,echo,echoe,echok,echoctl,echoke,imaxbel,iexten,clocal 

chdev -l tty0 -P -a login=enable

i then added this script to inittab to run just before cron
i then rebooted the machine, if it didnt work the first time i rebooted again (hence the "-P")
it then gave me a shell prompt where i removed the script from inttab and rebooted again...
finally i have the install_assit start

I had tried to change the tty setting directly in maintenance mode but it failed, i think it is because the ODM in use is from the CD not the hardrive, i also tried using maintenance mode to mount the filesystems manaually and chrooting to my new / and changing the ODM but that didnt work either.... if anyone knows a easier way to do this it will be good to know but this works!

For info the machines in question are 7043-150's with system firmware TCP05287 so if you upgrade to this firmware as required to run AIX 5.3 on the machine this is what happens!

[Exitium]

Assuming the system mcode is up to date, I have had many issues loading 5.3 on older systems(real common problem on 7043's) and for me what worked most of the time was updating the CD-rom mcode to the latest level.