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So Your HP 3000 Is Hung - Now What?
Written By: Stan Sieler

If your HP 3000 system has crashed (e.g., "system abort"), then you want the System Abort web page.

Please follow this checklist, to help the support people to better understand the system hang.

  1. Does anything work?

    1. Can you hit <return> at the console and get a prompt?

      Yes: ____ No: ____

    2. Can you run a program? Let's try EDITOR:
         :editor
      
      Did the banner display? ("HP32201A.09.00 EDIT/3000...")

      Yes: ____ No: ____

      Did you get the "/" prompt?

      Yes: ____ No: ____

      (You can use "E" to exit EDITOR)

    3. Can anyone logon?

      Yes: ____ No: ____

  2. What does the "speedometer" say?

    At the hardware console, press control-B. That should start a display, at the bottom left of the screen, of four-digit hex numbers. If the system is still somewhat alive, there should be a pair of hex numbers alternating between FFFF and F#FF (e.g., F7FF). We're interested in that F#FF, not the FFFF. (If one of the numbers is DEAD, then you want to go to the System Abort web page.)

    Value: _______ (not "FFFF"!)

  3. Is there disk activity? (E.g., disk activity lights flashing)

    Yes: ____ No: ____ (If Yes, what ldevs?: _______________________)

  4. Is there tape activity? (E.g., tape activity lights flashing)

    Yes: ____ No: ____ (If Yes, what ldevs?: _______________________)

  5. What are the last few console messages? (If possible cut/paste the console memory and email it to support.)

              ____________________________________________

              ____________________________________________

              ____________________________________________

              ____________________________________________

  6. What were the last few things you remember the system doing? (e.g., jobs run, program run)

              ____________________________________________

              ____________________________________________

              ____________________________________________

              ____________________________________________

  7. Perform a memory dump, which saves the contents of memory and other information to tape:
    (if this is the first hang you've had in a very long time, and if you have a large memory system, you might just decide to reboot instead):

    1. press control-B, then TC, then press <return> ... do not enter RS!

      Note: do not wander away from the console ... you will need to be there when the computer asks questions:

      • Boot from primary path?      enter: Y

      • Interect with IPL?      enter: Y

    2. Put a write-enabled tape into the tape drive.

    3. At the ISL prompt, enter: DUMP

    4. Enter a one line description of the dump, and press <return>
      The description should have your name & phone# in it, as well as a brief description of the hang.

      The dump should now start writing to the tape, and will print periods on the console while it is writing (one period per megabyte dumped). The dump will take between 5 minutes and 2 hours, depending upon how much memory your computer has, and how busy the computer was.

    5. When the dump is done, eject the tape, write-protect it, and make sure it is labelled with the date and word "DUMP".

  8. Restart the system as normal (e.g.: START)
    The following is optional, but useful and speeds up dump analysis.
    If you skip it, then please send the dump tape you just created to the support group.

  9. Load the memory dump onto your HP 3000 from the tape:

    1. Logon as MGR.TELESUP,DUMPS or MANAGER.SYS,DUMPS, or wherever you want to logon and put the memory dump.

      If you've never done this before, we suggest:

      :HELLO MANAGER.SYS
      :NEWGROUP DUMPS
      :CHGROUP DUMPS
      
      (Note: you might want to NEWGROUP/HOMEVS the DUMPS groups to a user volume set that has a lot of available free space.)

    2. Run the DAT (Dump Analysis Tool) program to load the dump:
            :DAT.DAT.TELESUP
      

    3. Tell DAT to load the dump into a file named something like HANG1.

      (There is a five character limit to the dump name. The first character has to be a letter, and may be followed by any combination of letters and digits.)

      Enter the getdump command: (The following example creates a dump file called HANG1)

            getdump HANG1
      

      DAT will request the tape (you may need to =REPLY to the tape request) and will allocate disk space to hold the dump. It then reads the tape onto disk, and displays a progress bar during loading.

    4. Load the DAT macros: (HANG1 is the name from the prior step)
            macstart "HANG1", "1"
      

      Note: if DAT says it found errors while loading the dump, and asks if it should continue, enter YES.

    5. Pre-process the dump, saving time for support:
            process_wait; ui_showjob
      
    6. Exit DAT:
            exit
      

  10. STORE the dump to tape
          :STORE HANG1@ ;; show; progress
    

    (You can STORE the dump onto the original tape, if you wish ... the original dump tape is no longer needed, because the STORE tape version is more useful.)

  11. Send the STORE tape with the dump to the support group.


Last modified: 2004-05-25 - BPD

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