Old School AIX on a newer RS/6000?
 

Ok.. now that I have my backup... I"m trying to get the software installed on our "new" RS/6000 box... it's a 604e processor, so it's still 32-bit...

But I doesn't seem to want to boot from either the tape or the floppy disk... it does seem to want to access the CDROM but that's no use to me, since AIX 3.2.5 isn't on CD.

Now this box doesn't have a graphics card in it... so I'm currently using our IBM 3151 for all of this...

I feel I might be missing something during boot by not having a real kayboard and graphics cars in the machine... possibly being able to select which boot device?

Any thoughts??

I guess some info that I should give u guys is this:

When I try to boot the new box... With or without the tape and/or floppy (BOSBOOT)..

I get this:

LOAD: Waiting 60 seconds for Spanning Tree

And then after about a minute, I get this:



LOAD: ARP: do-arp-req failed: 1 .... 2..... 3..... 4.... 5...... after the 5th time the machine reboots itself.

spanning tree means that it's trying to boot from the network.
You should find how to boot from a tape...
It's a keystok interrupt, like "5" meaning "I want to stop and ask how to boot" and then you choose "select install or boot device" from a list.

^^^ ok... I've gotten that far now... I went into SMS, and changed the default boot order.. and now it does attempt to boot from the tape...

but after about 3-4 mins of the tape being accessed... it goes to the internal HS and boots AIX 5... so that is of no use to me.

The plan is for me to install my backed up system of AIX 3.2.5 from my tape to the new box... I used mksysb to backup the system onto the tape... but that doesn't seem to be what the box wants in order to start/install.

Any ideas?

This is very frustrating, especially since no one seems to know the older AIX, everyone I talk to and/or call says well.. I've never really installed a system from a tape before... or... wow, thats an old AIX version.

is the difference so big between the newer versions and ver. 3.2.5?

It seems to me that I need to boot into a maintenance mode of whatever version I've used to backup the system with...

So I need to boot into maintenance with ver. 3.2.5 in order to be able to restore that tape.

And I do have a set of 4 disks that are supposed to be system/install/maintenance disks.. but the new box doesn't seem to want to boot from it...

I know the disks work, because the old server would boot from them... but only in maintenance/service mode (with the key)... and as far as i'm told the new system don't have a "service" mode anymore.

What application are you running on your "old" system ? Could you imagine install it on AIX 5 on the new system ?

Well the accounting system uses INFORMIX 4.1 I believe... So I don't know if that will work under AIX 5... some say it might, but this can't be a hit and miss thing...

I don't want to have to rebuild the database because of a new OS version...

If AIX is backwards compatible enough to run such an old version of informix then that would probably make things a lot easier...

The rest of the software (the actual accounting software) was written by a 3rd party specifically for us.. and will run on a newer version of AIX... its currently running elsewhere on a AIX 4.3 box.. but they upgraded informix and had to go though a lot of trouble by the means of converting the database and whatnot. And this route isn't really an option for us.

You have an old running system, and a new AIX 5.1 system.
So, there is no risky things.
I am currently using old Informix versions on brand new AIX 5.2 systems, without problem.
Simply
. create the /informix filesystem on the new machine
. backup /informix on the old machine : "time find /informix -print |cpio -oBdv >/dev/rmt0"
. populate /informix on the new machine from the tape : "time cpio -imBdv </dev/rmt0"
. create the informix user and the informix group the same way as on the old machine.
. add in /etc/services the informix services the same way as on the old system.

That's all, folks!

It works fin in my lab, and I saw a lot of people using it in production environment.

^^^ Hey that's great news... I have currently just requested AIX 5 from the company that sold me the RS/6000 box... along with a graphics card.

Now, with all that said and done... I still think I have one more problem left.

And that would be the version of Informix is on 1/4 tapes and we don't have a drive for that... now without having to go out and hunt down a drive that will take the tapes, is there any way for me to get them as binary's or on CD?

This is exactly what I have/need:

Informix SQL Runtime Version 4.1
Informix ESQL Runtime Version 5.1
Informix SE for UNIX Runtime Version 5.0

^^^^ All of the above are on 1/4" tapes and that is what is stopping me now.

So unless I can copy over the existing installation onto the fresh installation of AIX 5, then I see this as being a problem.. lol

I have called Informix support here in Canada (got the number from IBM's website) and they said they don't support it anymore, and that they pretty much couldn't help me without us upgrading to a newer current version.

Ideas?

You can copy your old filesystem from the old install, it will work.

I have a feeling this will be a very interesting proceedure...

So you're saying if I do a fresh install of AIX 5, i can copy over what I need from my old install and it will work?

What about all the sym. links? Aren't there links in the system folders which won't be there anymore since i'm installing a fresh copy of AIX?

I'm trying to understand what you're saying here..

Step 1: Install fresh copy of AIX 5

Step 2: Copy over /informix and all other data files/folders??

doesn't Informix have to install files into the system? library files, etc? or will the AIX 5 install have everything informix needs?

I'm not very comfortable with AIX... I've only been messing around with it since all of these problems at work.

So if you could better explain u'rself that would be great!

Cheers,

Sascha

Also... some doubts that I'm having is that maybe AIX 3.2.5 can't be installed on this newer box?

Is that possible?

It's a 7043-150 server/workstation... with a 375MHz 604e processor... Which is 32-bit, and i chose that one because I firgured that the 64-bit processor wouldn't support V3.2.5.

^^^ Update... According to IBM... The box I have doesn't support AIX versions older then 4.2.1

So that explains some of the problems i'm having...

but I have a copy of AIX 5 on the way, and I'm really hoping that I can install it and copy over the rest of the files i need (Informix and user DB) and have it work.

Have a look at your old install. But I'm pretty sure that all you need is in your /informix filesystem, and subdirectories.
Just create the user the same way (same uid and gid, same .profile) and it should work.
You can even copy everything via nfs (find . print |cpio -pmdulv /remote).
There are very few things you have to do in / or /etc.
Just give it a try, there is no risk until you decide to power off the old system.

^^ I have not a really big problem...
I did the cpio backup but cannot restore on the new box... and while moving the tape drive to the new box i had to shutdown the old system and now it doesn't want to start anymore... i've been trying for 2 hrs now, hoping to get lucky and the thing will boot.. but no.. :(

Anyways... When i try to do the restore i says something like can't read from input device

the only thing I can think of is that the tape went bad? but then why wouldn't it show any errors during the backup phase?

So anyways.. the only other chance I have now I think is to FTP the files from my PC to the new server (I backed up the whole AIX 3.2.5 system on my WinXP PC)... but as I understand it now, all the file permissions are now lost... so I'm just going to give every file read/write permissions and see if that helps..

If you have any ideas... please share... I'm really stuck now :S

Regards,

Sascha