RE: RedHat 7.2 on ES40 AlphaServer - Boot Problem - Help Solving

Good Evening Will!

 

Thank you for your interest.

 

After obtaining the ES40 (from eBay), I installed the RedHat 7.2 Operating
System for the purpose of running the application named Mathematica.  The
commands are all Plot commands inside of Mathematica.  The only other thing
I have ever run on the machine is the GnuChess program.  For most of the
first two years of using the machine, I didn't utilize any of the Plot
commands because everything I did was numerical in nature.  Recently I did
some work that involved plotting elliptical figures.  Incidentally, the
video card is a Radeon 7900.  The initial installation of the operating
system was made by following the book Learning RED HAT LINUX, 2nd Edition,
which covers Red Hat 7.2 for Intel, Alpha and AMD based machines.  The
author is Bill McCarty.

 

Working by reading the book while sitting in front of the keyboard and
monitor, resulted in a working system, although as I recall, getting the
aboot> feature of the AlphaServer set up was the single most difficult task.

 

Now, moving forward in time to the last six weeks, on the day when the ES40
would not boot, I returned to the book Learning RED HAT LINUX, 2nd Edition,
looking in the index for "troubleshooting" or "boot problems" and anything
else that might be helpful.  My reading brought to light the concept of an
"upgrade installation" and in the heat-of-the moment, that seemed to promise
a quick fix.  The words about nothing being erased during an upgrade
installation seemed seductive to me.  I located the original package of
RedHat7.2 and performed the "upgrade."  The system will still not boot from
the set of SCSI disks containing the original installation with the
"upgrade."  The machine progresses to aboot>, where I used to enter 0 (zero)
to boot the system and all that happens is "/etc/aboot.conf:  file not
found" appears on the screen after I enter the 0 and that is followed by
another aboot>.

 

When the machine first malfunctioned, it did not start the boot, it just sat
with a black screen, however, I don't know if the "upgrade" installation was
a good idea or not?  Is this situation a step in the right direction or the
wrong direction?  Was the decision to attempt the "upgrade" install a bad
decision?

 

Your thoughts greatly appreciated.

 

Bill

 

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of Will L Givens
Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2009 12:26 AM
To: 'Linux on Alpha processors'
Subject: RE: RedHat 7.2 on ES40 AlphaServer - Boot Problem - Help Solving

 

Hate to say it but you gave us PLENTY of general information. What commands
did you run? What kind of 'fancy' graphix did you try to create and how (aka
using what program)?  Will L G

 

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
Behalf Of William E Bohrer
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2009 10:30
To: [email protected]
Subject: RedHat 7.2 on ES40 AlphaServer - Boot Problem - Help Solving

 

Hello!

 

Problem Description:  a previously stable installation of RedHat 7.2 on an
ES40 AlphaServer supporting the application Mathematica 5.0 (which runs
under Linux).  This computer has been in routine weekly use by me for the
purpose of solving various math problems of interest to me as a hobby and
also sometimes to support consulting work performed by me (business has been
poor of late).  This system has been operating successfully for at least
three years.

 

About 6 weeks ago I attempted the generation of some fancy graphics displays
to the screen, something I had not attempted previously.  Strange things,
with minor impact seemed to happen after that, slower booting is one symptom
and some commands that worked before did not seem to work as they had in the
past, but nothing of a work stopping nature.

 

Then, one day the system simply would not boot.

 

As a starting point I removed all the disks; installed spare disks and
reinstalled RedHat 7.2.  The system runs well with the reinstalled operating
system.  By "runs well" I mean that you can play games on it with flawless
and quick performance.  I have not attempted to reinstall the Mathematica
application yet.  Clearly not a hardware problem.  Somehow, I have damaged
the software while attempting the fancy plotting (color plots, lots of
curves, etc.) or at least so it appears.

 

The problem:  reinstalling Mathematica requires a payment to Wolfram
Research (not excessive, but I would just as soon avoid it if possible) and
I will lose electronic copies of the Notebooks developed on this system.  

There are paper copies of the work performed to date, however, it would be
nice to skip retyping those .nb files if possible.

 

The question is how to troubleshoot the damaged installation?  Philosophical
guidance at this point, please.  Please keep in mind that while I had
sufficient competence to follow directions and successfully install RedHat
7.2 on the ES40; that is not particularly a strong point with my computer
expertise.

 

Any and all suggestion gratefully accepted!

 

Thanks,

 

Bill

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