Hi All

I am trying to boot up an old AIX 5.3 pseries machine. I was able to get into the system using AIX 1st CD to mount / and /usr filesystem and could change the root password as well. Everything is working fine until I boot from harddisk.

The machine runs with 256MB RAM and AIX 5.3.

When I boot using the default boot order, it throws a below error and moves into ok> prompt without getting in.

Error message : "savebase memory allocation failed" and "boot file did not find a word". None of the site gives me a solution rather than 'bosboot' and 'savebase' command usage. Please let me know if i have to use something like 'savebase -d /dev/hdisk0' to bring the AIX up wothout any issues. The machine was not booted for quite few years. It has loads of data on it. I am able to view those by getting in using AIX CD.

Adding to this, when i try changing the filesystem size for /usr, it throws up a warning message followed by increased filesystem message.

<Snip>

#chfs -a size=+500M /usr
0516-1734 extendlv: Warning, savebase failed. Please manually run 'savebase' before rebooting.
File System size changed to 5111808.
#

</Snip>

What steps do i need to perform to fix this issue. Will a reboot fix it?. Please advise!!.

Any help on this is highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.


- Vathsan.

just some quick thoughts
try running bosboot (bosboot -w filename iirc) with output to a file. Maybe your hd5 is too small to save it all.

other possible problems: /, and or /tmp needs space

Note: savebase is used to update the ODM info on hd5. compare the size of the bosboot -w to the size of hd5 - just incase your bootimage is too large to fit in hd5. This does not happen often, but it happens.

Try posting on rootvg.net forums. They are more AIX minded.