Re: System crashes in 7.2

[Brad Miller <miller@ACORN.CS.ROCHESTER.EDU>]

    Date: Wed, 1 Jun 88 10:48:00 PDT
    From: timelord@eos.arc.nasa.gov (G. Murdock Helms)


    I'm trying to load 7.2 at our site, and I'm having some difficulty with
    setting the site on the fileserver.  I have been able to set the site
    correctly to Barracuda (our fileserver) and have done an incremental 
    save.   However, if I reboot the incremental world and attempt to 
    Restore Distribution, the file server complains that "DIS-LOCAL-HOST
    does not support rtape services".  If I ask for a menu to respecify
    which host the tape is mounted on, and ask for either "Local" or type
    in "Barracuda" for "Other", the menu highlights "Local" and will then
    let me proceed (rtape services do indeed exist on Barracuda).

We ran into a similar problem. DIS-LOCAL-HOST is in the DISTRIBUTION
namespace, which your machine knows about, though it won't necessarily tell
you simply if DISTRIBUTION isn't on your local namespace's search list (no
reason it should be, either). To prove it: just edit object host
DISTRIBUTION|DIS-LOCAL-HOST.

Anyway that isn't the problem. The problem seems to be more related to the
fact that you did the set-site on the primary namespace server/file server
(at least, that's how I ran into it). To work around it:

1. Bring up the distribution 7.2 on a non-server host (neither namespace nor file).

2. do the set site on this host, either letting it get the info it needs
from the network, or tell it explicitly who the namespace server is.

3. Save this world (incremental).

This world can then be booted on your server, and it will discover it is the
(primary) server and update it's idea of the namespace from the files. You
should then save this resulting world for this machine.

What we do locally is:

Build a site-configured world (from #3, above).

Add Comm software (e.g. TCP, NNTP) software, and the site system and save this
world. 

Then build other worlds. ONe for the file/name server just tells itself it
is a server (see previous notes on this subject in this list), but you could
boot the comm world on your server and load any local server hacks you want
there (i.e. server-finger), then save it's world. Similarly for secondary
namespace servers, since they should store a version of the namespace in the
booted world too (full updates of entire namespaces take too long, esp. if
you are not going from a file). You can build your normal user worlds on top
of the comm world too at this point. Everything can be incremental, though
there is some reason for making your namespace servers do a full-gc and
complete save (since only a full-gc will collapse multiple references to the
same object in different namespaces).

Hope this helps,

----
Brad Miller		U. Rochester Comp Sci Dept.
miller@cs.rochester.edu {...allegra!rochester!miller}