Hidden Value December 2004

Hidden Value details commands and procedures in MPE that can improve your productivity with HP 3000 systems. Send your tips to john@burke-consulting.com

Edited by John Burke

How can I correct this problem?
*Error: The directory /SYS/hpstage must be on LDEV1 but is not (STAGEMAN 1187)
It looks to me like /SYS/hpstage appears to be on LDEV 1.

John Burke replies:

Have you done a reload or restore of the SYS account? It could be something below the hpstage directory that is causing the problem. Quick solution: Try issuing the UNINSTALL followed by INITIALIZE. Longer solution: Store off /SYS/hpstage and everything under it, then restore with the ;DEV=1.

Help! I’m trying to add my DDS-2 drive in SYSGEN, I get the following error:
Can’t purge config file MISCP.BOOTUP.SYS
security violation (fserr 93)

John Burke and Joseph Rosenblatt reply:

The last time you rebooted you did START RECOVERY. (You can verify this with the MISC command in SYSINFO. PRVXL.TELESUP.) That is why your configuration file is in BOOTUP.SYS instead of CONFIG.SYS. If the current configuration is “good” then go into SYSGEN and type KEEP CONFIG.SYS. Then you can modify the IO section. Keep the file and reboot using START NORECOVERY. This will automatically invoke the default configuration group CONFIG.SYS.

It is a bad idea in general to run for any length of time under START RECOVERY mode. These days, the only reason to use START RECOVERY is if you want to recover scheduled or waiting jobs. Before the native mode spooler, you had to do a START RECOVERY or else you would lose spoolfiles, but that is no longer the case.

How can I test for the presence of a mounted tape with write enabled if the system reports tapes when none are present?

Mark Wonsil replies:

Try the free utility CHKTAPE from Allegro? It’s at www.allegro.com/software/hp3000/stuff/CHKTAPE.txt. Use chktape devicenumber. ChkTape must reside in a group.account with PM capability.

How can I limit the VT-MGR connections (NS/VT) coming from the network to a range of LDEVs (or at least, specifying the beginning of the device range)?

James Hofmeister replies:

It is possible to control the starting LDEV for NS-VT and telnet by configuring all LDEVs up to your selected starting point with nailed LDEVs (bogus DTC LDEVs as an example) or other configured sysgen devices. It is then possible to limit the number of inbound NS-VT connections with the nscontrol command:

NSCONTROL START;SERVER={servername}[,minservers][,maxservers]

Here I set the maximum to #2

:nscontrol start;server=vtserver,0,2

When I attempt to log on the third session I get the following error at the console:

** NS/3000 RESOURCE ERROR IN DSDAD; Job: 0; PIN: 69; Info: 0
- Error: 18; Number of servers exceeds max servers limit
- Miscellaneous : 2