RE: Damaged Objects/Upgrade Question

At 03:52 AM 7/2/02, Andy Nolan-Parkhouse wrote:
>(snips here and there)
>
>You don't mention whether you performed a
>reclaim storage as part of your therapy.  That might fix the issue.
>After all you've been through, it might be therapeutic.

There were about three days where my camping cot was next to the AS/400 and
I was on-site pretty much 24 hours a day for a while.  Sleep deprivation
makes my memory of a couple of the steps a little hazy, but, I did do a
reclaim storage as my first hope of fixing whatever was wrong after doing
the first reclaim storage.  For some reason my recollection was that it,
too, failed with the machine check error.

I also did one after getting the system back and discovering the oddity
with the PTFs and the DROP FUNCTION SQL statement.  I think I might do one
now that the controller is repaired.

By the way, I would recommend that anyone in a situation like this make
sure that they write down every step they take and the results.  It should
be SOP, but I failed to do it because I was flustered and at each step I
kept thinking.  "OK, just this one more thing and everything will be
working."  Wrong!  Write it down!



>That raises the question as to how normal are your circumstances.  My
>gut reaction is to do the complete backup thing (I prefer option 21 over
>SAVSTG), do a RCLSTG, permanently apply all the PTF's, and then do an
>upgrade.


...and I had the full saves in addition to the SAVSTG, but my rationale was
that, after an upgrade that fails, a restore storage is the fastest and
most reliable way to get back to the previous system *exactly*.

Once having done that and thinking that some system objects were messed up,
I chose to restore the OS from the distribution media because I was not
satisfied with the integrity of the system to initiate an ordinary restore
from the other tapes - nor was I certain that they hadn't been corrupted on
write, either.  I was reasonably certain that the CDs maintained integrity
and if that failed then the controller problem would be preventing any
restore and so that would have to be my first repair.

>  Vernon posted a link to the hardware manual.

To which he has my heartfelt "thanks".  I always knew those manuals had to
be up there someone, but for some reason, I've not been able to find them
in a search of the publib.


>I think that
>after you review it, you'll find that removing the FSIOP and moving the
>Ethernet card are not overly difficult.  If you have resolved your
>problems with the disk controller, you could choose any available
>release and still maintain access to your Ethernet card.

That's been my impression and my hope, but, have you ever been confident in
what you do and you just have one of those days (or 3 days in this case)
that really knocks you down a few pegs?  This little experience has really
"put the fear in me" at the moment, so I'm being extra cautious.

I've been debating the two sides of that.  On the one hand, I don't relish
doing a V4R4 => V4R5 => V5R1 conversion, stopping along the way to make the
controller change -- if an upgrade will fix the problem, one upgrade is
enough, but on the other hand, my system is (potentially) unstable in its
current condition and making configuration changes while trying to resolve
a software problem is usually a diagnostic/repair step I like to avoid.