Re: Disk replacement in an AS 200 4/166 ("Avanti")

Dear Alpha Linux users,

just for your information and to get it into any archives, 
I follow to my own posting about replacing failing internal disks.
Here is what I did:


1) The machine is an AlphaStation 200 4/166 (called an "Avanti") 
   with two internal SCSI disks, a RZ26L and a RZ28 (1 and 2 GB), 
   plus an internal RRD43 CD-ROM (SCSI-IDs 0, 1, and 4).
   The machine is booted using the ARC bios and Milo 2.0.35.
   Connected to it is an external SCSI box with two tape drives 
   (Exabyte EXB-8200 "Video-8" and Tandberg TDC 3800 "QIC-150", 
   SCSI-IDs 2 and 3), that box still has an empty slot.

2) I got a 3.5" Quantum disk of 9 GB and installed it in the empty 
   external slot with ID 5.
   (My original assumption about 5.25" was of course wrong - 
   that place is taken by the internal CD-ROM drive, the disk slots 
   are 3.5"; one is 1" high and the other 1.6" AIUI.)

3) After booting, I checked 'dmesg' output and found all drives up. 
   'fdisk -l /dev/sdc' (the new disk) showed a single partition 
   of type 7 ("HPFS/NTFS") from previous PC usage. To fully wipe it, 
   I did: 
      dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sdc bs=64k

4) I now created partitions on that new disk: 
      sdc1    ext2  /boot 
      sdc2    FAT   /dos
      sdc3          swap 
      sdc4          extended 
        sdc5  ext2  /tmp 
        sdc6  ext2  /
        sdc7  ext2  ...data...

5) I created the appropriate file systems in these partitions 
   (had to install the "DOS formatting" package for "mkfs.dos" ;-), 
   mounted them, and copied the appropriate contents from the 
   existing file systems into the new one by 
      cd /old ; find . -print | cpio -pdmav /mnt 
   I corrected the future '/etc/fstab' manually.

6) As a first test, I rebooted the machine and entered MILO's 
   interactive mode, where I tried 
      ls sdc2:/        worked, showed the future "/dos" 
      ls sdc1:/        failed, showed some '//%' or similar

7) I rebooted into Linux and checked the file systems - all ok. 
   I used 'tune2fs' and found that "sda1" (the old '/boot') 
   was "ext2 version 0", whereas "sdc1" (the future one) 
   was "ext2 version 1" with feature "sparse_superblock".

   I redid the file system creation on "sdc1" with "mke2fs -O none", 
   filled it again, and retried the test of step 6 - worked!

8) I shut down the stuff, unplugged it, removed the two internal 
   disks, and inserted the new one. For better cooling, I used 
   the upper slot even though it is a low profile disk that would 
   also fit the lowert one.

   Using the occasion, I also inserted two 32 MB SIMMs (PS/2 style, 
   from an old IBM RS/6000 model 25 T) to increase RAM from 96 MB 
   to 160 MB.

8) I rebooted to ARC and changed the boot parameters given to Milo 
   (old root partition was "sda4", new one "sda6"). 
   When rebooting to Milo, I found the new RAM was recognised.

   Then I rebooted into Linux. I had to make the new "/tmp" 
   world-writable, after that everything worked with the new disk.


Regards and a Merry Christmas to all of you, 
Joerg Bruehe

-- 
Joerg Bruehe, SQL Datenbanksysteme GmbH, Berlin, Germany
     (speaking only for himself)
mailto: [email protected]