Hello.
After reactivating a NeXTcube with NeXTstep 3.3 I asked myself if there is any possibility to "clone" a completely installed and running system of NeXTstep 3.3 to a second hard drive within the SCSI-chain. As far as I'm pretty new to NeXT in any objective I'm fairly un-trained in those topics and I would appreciate any hint about this.
Thank You very much and with kind regards from Switzerland
J
The next was just like the mac in this regard. Just use Disk builder and you can clone the system you already have set up.
I dont have a system anymore so I cant give better directions, but I remember it being pretty straight forward.
I seem to recall that you could also netboot, and then install off the net.
(but at 10bt thats slow) :)
I am going to try and upgrade my color turbo slab to NS3.3 and a larger hard disk, but am unsure if DiskBuilder can do it. Can I follow the directions in Chapter7 of the SysAdmin guide posted earlier? Can DiskBuilder in NS 3.0 properly handle a 4G seagate disk? Will I need to add a disktab entry for this drive first? Is it easier to just do it all at the command prompt using boot and dd?
Chef
Been reading these two threads, and hopefully this will give me what I need.
http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=62http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=146
What is the proper NS command to probe the scsi chain to see what devices are set to what ID? I need to determine what the internal id is of my hard disk, so I can set the external one properly, along with the cdrom.
Chef
Got the disktab added, drive installed in external enclosure, and am now using BuildDisk to create a system on it. Will the resulting disk be basically the same as the internal one, with the same apps, users, and documents? Do I need to manually move any specific things over to the new disk? I figured I would try the BuildDisk method first, and if that did not work, then do things manually following the instructions suggested by Andreas in the other threads.
Chef
EDIT:
BuildDisk finished, so I disconnected the internal HD and set the external drive to id zero, but it will not boot. The drive spins up, but it never starts the OS. If I escape into the rom monitor and do a boot command, it gives "SCSI msgout phase" errors and then says "no SCSI disk". Everything seemed to go ok in the initialization and BuildDisk, but no boot now.
nextchef
In reference to the threads you mentioned earlier, threads which I contributed to - I thought I'd come clean and admit I only had partial success in my attempts to make a new, bigger 'cloned' boot drives for my NeXT computers. I would love to hear how one can easily clone a working boot drive with all of its apps onto a larger drive and have the larger drive then work as a boot drive in a NeXT computer. After a lot of failed attempts, I was only able to make a boot drive by using the original NeXTStep 3.3 installation CD-ROM and floppy that I bought through e-bay. I was then able to clone apps from one drive to another using dump|restore.
I purchased a Seagate/Avid ST15150N 4GB drive and wanted to make it a boot drive for a newly acquired NeXTCube. I also wanted to clone the apps from my NeXTStation Turbo Color so I would be able to use them on the NeXTCube. Unfortunately, I didn't keep notes on the method that finally worked (since I spent so much time trying so many different combinations of things I got tired of keeping notes) but by looking at the notes I did take I'm pretty sure that the following is what finally worked:
1) Install new HD in NeXTCube (the one that has a floppy drive).
2) Use installation CD (from external cd-rom drive on SCSI bus) and floppy from original NeXT install package to install NS 3.3 on drive. [I don't recall having to use disktab entries or anything to install NS 3.3 this way]
3) Remove the drive from the NeXTCube and put into an external drive case. Set external drive SCSI ID jumper to '#2'. leave terminator jumper in place. Connect to Next computer that has boot drive you want clone of (in this case, my NeXTstation).
4) Boot up NeXTstation and 'Disk' appears.
5) run Terminal (Unix command terminal) app. And enter the following:
entry #1) # cd /Disk
entry #2) # ls [Confirms that 'Disk' is the disk I am in now, files are listed.]
entry #3) # dump 0f - /dev/sd0a | restore –rf - [note that spaces are important! 0 is zero not letter o!]
6) Remove newly cloned disk from external drive case and set SCSI id jumper to #1. Place back in NeXTCube as boot disk. Apps copied from NeXTStation (backup | restored) will appear and should work, unless they sense the new CPU (Mathematica) or need the liscense number reinserted.
Note1: I was never able to see the entire 4 GB of my Avid/Seagate ST15150N drive. I tried a number of things, including new disktab entries and buildisk and just couldn't get it right. My 4 GB drive appears to have only 2 GB of memory available to my NeXT even though buildisk originally identified it as having 4095 MB of memory and I tried to partition it into two 2 GB sections.
Note2: I tried a few different ways of making a cloned drive the boot drive including trying to install a boot block. I had no success.
If anybody can work out a simpler way to do this, I'm sure others would appreciate it. I feel like folks are trying to reinvent the wheel on this topic - someone must have experience doing it in an elegant way (or at least someone must know definitively that it can't be done elegantly)! Good luck with your efforts and please take notes you can share with the rest of us!
Quote from: "idylukewild"Apps copied from NeXTStation (backup | restored) will appear and should work, unless they sense the new CPU (Mathematica) or need the liscense number reinserted.
Luckily I am cloning a drive for the same machine, so the cpu should not change. It will really be a bummer if the licenses do not transfer, since this system has quite a few commercial apps that I would really love to keep. I will try the low level approach that Andreas mentioned, to see if it has better success. If that proves unsuccessful, I will have to do a fresh install of NS3.3 and try the dump/restore method you mentioned. Luckily I have 8 or so of the drives that I can test with, without having to wipe one clean between attempts.
Thanks for the extra info, and I will certainly let everyone know how it goes.
Chef
Quote from: "idylukewild"nextchef
Note1: I was never able to see the entire 4 GB of my Avid/Seagate ST15150N drive. I tried a number of things, including new disktab entries and buildisk and just couldn't get it right. My 4 GB drive appears to have only 2 GB of memory available to my NeXT even though buildisk originally identified it as having 4095 MB of memory and I tried to partition it into two 2 GB sections.
Hello. I have used the following to open up [have the NeXT "see"] the other 2GB on a Seagate ST15230N - which is basically the same drive. Use at your own "risk".
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
To create additional space on a 4.3GB hard drive [NeXT] -
( Notes: 0 is a zero in all cases - text after # is a comment, don't type it) .
1. Boot
2. Login in as root
3. Open a terminal window.
4. Type the following in the terminal window:
cd / # make sure you are in root
mkdir disk2 # create the mount point
cd /etc # get into the etc directory
cp fstab fstab.old # make a backup of fstab
chmod 644 fstab # change permissions on fstab to make it writeable
5. edit the fstab file
To edit the fstab file do the following:
1. In File Viewer click on the etc folder
2. In the etc directory structure double click on fstab file [the first one - with no extension]
3. This should bring up the NeXT edit program and the fstab file will be displayed in the edit window as follows:
#
# DO NOT DELETE THIS FILE, IT IS REQUIRED FOR BOOTING
#
# This file contains information used to mount local hard disks.
# Consult your Network and System Administration manual
# for information on adding local disks. Information on the format
# of entries in this file can also be found in the fstab man page.
#
/dev/sd0a / 4.3 rw,noquota,noauto 0 1
Add the following line after the last line above:
/dev/sd0b /disk2 4.3 rw,noquota 0 2
Save the file [save - not "save as"] and quit the NeXT edit program.
6. Type the following in the terminal window:
chmod 444 /etc/fstab # change permissions back to read only
7. Reboot the system in verbose mode. Watch to see if the /dev/sd0b partition is mounted on /disk2 and note errors [if any].
8. Login as root.
9. Double Click on the disk2 folder in the file manager and it should tell you that you have +/- 2GB of space available.
10. Optionally open a terminal window and type: df to get information on the mounted drives.
11. Additionally you may want to run a fsck on the new partition to verify its integrity. Type: fsck /dev/sd0b in a terminal window.
- You must enable the Unix Expert mode [in preferences] to see the etc folder.
Do the following:
1. In File Viewer click NextApps
2. In the NeXTApps directory tree double click Preferences.app
3. In the Preferences window scroll the bar right until you see the Unix tab
4. In the Unix selection check Unix Expert and Large File system
5. Close/Hide the Prefernces app and you should now see the etc directory in your root file system directory.
NOTE: *** [To name the new "disk" to as you wish - change the name of "disk2' to whatever you want.
IF you have already created a name [in this case - disk2, and you wish to change it - do the following:
1. Edit the fstab file first. Change /disk2 to /whatever
2. Type: mkdir /whatever in a terminal window
3. reboot
The partition will now be mounted on the /whatever folder and you
can delete the now empty /disk2 folder.]***
ps. THANK YOU GB!!! [you know who you are!] :D
Is it possible to run a turbo slab without an internal hard disk?
I had forgotten how fun SCSI can be, especially with old drives like this. Do you need termination on or off, should the term power come from the bus or the drive or both, spin up or delay, and on and on....
At this point, I can not even get the slab to see the drive when installed internally. I had to set the term power to both bus and drive to even get it to spin up, but still does not see it correctly. Here is what I have done so far, for those keeping score.
Added disktab entry for drive.
placed drive in external enclosure, setting id to 2
manually partitioned the drive into one 1999Meg partition to start
created a filesystem on the partition
used disk to add boot blocks
mounted the drive and did the dump/restore command to copy things to it
attempted to boot to it both inside the station, and in the external enclosure
I left my NS3.3 cd at home, so I can not try to install a fresh system first. Could I even do a dump/restore of a NS3.0 system to a HD that was installed with NS3.3. Will I need to get a NS3.0 cd to do the install, then do the dump/restore, and then try to update it to NS3.3.
That is where I stand currently. Will get the NS3.3 cd tonight, and try some more things tomorrow.
Think I will take a break from this, and try to get my IIgs system hooked up and working again, for a change of pace.
Chef
Ok, now that I have power again after the storm, I can get back to this.
I tried to boot the ColorTurbo with my NS 3.3 disk, using an old sun caddy cdrom, and it gives errors about not finding a boot block on the cd. I interrupted the boot, tried booting directly from the cd, and also tried booting with the 3.3 boot floppy with no success. The floppy boots ok, it finds the CD drive and tries to access the cd, and fails saying it can not find "blk0" or something like that. If I boot into the installed NS3.0 on the internal hard drive, I can mount the cd, traverse the directories, and open some files, so I believe the CD itself is ok. I even tried booting up with just the cd attached (and the internal hard disk unplugged) using the floppy, with the same result.
I am currently low level formatting the 4G drive, and will start the process from the other thread all over, and see how that goes.
Any thoughts on why it does not boot.
Here is the link to the page on Seagate for the jumper settings, so mabey someone can figure out what combinations of jumpers are required to get the slab to see it internally
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/scsi/st15150n.htmlChef
EDIT
Format finished. Could not get disk to initialize correctly with the multiple partitions, so I modified the disktab entry to just have the first 2G partition, and then it initialized successfully. I copied it directly from the disktab website, but I think it may not be correct Added the boot blocks using disk, then rebooted and it mounted the external drive correctly, so now I am doing the dump/restore process.
EDIT2
Dump/restore finished. Disconnected the internal HD and reset the external one to be SCSI ID 1 and still would not boot. Went into rom monitor and did a "b sd" and it still gives the "sc: SCSI msgout phase" errors, and now gives a "sc: selection failed" message as well. They both repeat in groups of three until the system gives up and says "no SCSI disk". It is accessing the disk, or at least the scsi bus, but never finds a suitable disk it can boot off of. Do I need to make the boot partition smaller? Is 2G too large for NS to boot off of?
Its Booting!!!!!!!!! Finally.
I removed the 4G drive and swapped it in the slab, and it actually booted correctly this time.
I guess it needs a drive to be internal in order to boot correctly. It could be a termination problem on the scsi bus, since no drive is installed to provide termination. I am no SCSI expert, but it sounds reasonable. I am worried that, as others have said, this full height 7200 rpm drive will get too hot for the slab. Even in an external enclosure with a fan, the drive was almost too hot to touch after the low level format and dump/restore. Will have to dig up a 50 pin ribbon cable terminator, and see if that provides the proper termination to get it booting externally.
Next I need to see if I can upgrade it to NS3.3, without loosing all the installed apps registrations, and get it to see the other 2gigs on the drive.
Once I am sure it is working, I will take my notes and put together a more detailed step-by-step explanation of how I did it.
Chef
Here is a very rough first draft of what I did to clone the drive. I need to clean things up, and add a couple of links, but I figured I would release it to the wild for comment.
Be gentle now ;)
Chef
Cloning My NeXT Color Turbo System to a Larger Hard Drive
by NeXTchef
Here are the steps that I performed in order to transfer the installed NS operating system on my Color Turbo to a larger HD. The system came to me with a ~400M drive, installed with NS3.0 and a bunch of additional applications. As 400M is a bit small, I wanted to "clone" the existing install to a larger HD, but did not want to risk trashing the existing system. For the upgrade hard disk, I used a 4Gb Seagate drive (ST15150N), as it has a 50pin SCSI connector and a faster 7200rpm speed.
The plan was to install the 4G in an external enclosure, attach it to the NeXT, and use BuildDisk to create a bootable copy on the external drive. The 4G Seagate is not recognized natively by the NS system, so the NS applications did not seem to handle it correctly. I tried many different suggestions from the nextcomputers.org forum, but could never get the BuildDisk application to work correctly. I take no credit for most of the information contained within, it was gleaned from the great folks over at the nextcomputers.org forum. Additional credits and links to follow at the end of the document.
Overview of steps to be performed
Added disktab entry for drive.
Placed drive in external enclosure, setting id to 2
Low level format of the drive
Initialize the drive with one 2G partition and create a filesystem
Use disk to add boot blocks to the drive
Mounted the drive and did the dump/restore command to copy things to it
Removed the drive from the enclosure and swapped it into the slab for a test
Credits, Thanks, and Assorted Links
The biggest credit goes to all the users on the nextcomputers.org forum. They have been especially helpful, and a great resource concerning all things NeXT. Below are two threads from the forum, which most of this info is gleaned from, especially the notes from Andreas on the proper use of dump/restore to clone the data to the new drive.
http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=62 http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/index.php?topic=146http://deadstart.net/NeXT/disktab/ With that in mind, here are the "manual" (non GUI app) steps that I had to perform in order to accomplish this upgrade.
Added disktab entry for drive.
In order for NS to access this large drive correctly, it must be told some details on how the drive partitions need to be laid out. This is done in a file called disktab, located in the \etc directory. NS has a limit of 2G for a partition, so two partitions will be needed on this drive. Below is the disktab entry for this specific hard disk, gotten from NS/OS Disktab page at
http://deadstart.net/NeXT/disktab/ . I do not pretend to understand what all the options mean, and the man pages and other resources can fill that in for those interested. Simply stated, it gives NS some info on the physical aspects of the drive, and exactly where it needs to go sector wise, in order to use the drive. In this example, the 4G drive would be carved into 3 partitions, two 2G ones, denoted by "pa" and "pb", and one for whatever is left, denoted by "pc".
# SEAGATE ST15150N
SEAGATE|SEAGATE ST15150N|SEAGATE ST15150N 001700:\
:ty=fixed_rw_scsi:nc#3712:nt#21:ns#56:ss#1024:rm#7200:\
:fp#160:bp#0:ng#0:gs#0:ga#0:ao#0:\
:os=sdmach:z0#32:z1#96:hn=localhost:ro=a:\
:pa#0:sa#2097152:ba#8192:fa#1024:ca#8:da#4096:ra#10:oa=time:\
:ia:ta=4.3BSD:\
:pb#2097152:sb#2097152:bb#8192:fb#1024:cb#8:db#4096:rb#10:ob=time:\
:ib:tb=4.3BSD:\
:pc#4194304:sc#194295:bc#8192:fc#1024:cc#8:dc#4096:rc#10:oc=time:\
:ic:tc=4.3BSD:
This file would not work for me, as I always got errors when next would try to initialize the second partition and create a filesystem, so I commented out the entries for partition 2 and 3. This allowed me to successfully initialize the drive, but at the expense of only having one 2G partition, as shown below.
# SEAGATE ST15150N
SEAGATE|SEAGATE ST15150N|SEAGATE ST15150N 001700:\
:ty=fixed_rw_scsi:nc#3712:nt#21:ns#56:ss#1024:rm#7200:\
:fp#160:bp#0:ng#0:gs#0:ga#0:ao#0:\
:os=sdmach:z0#32:z1#96:hn=localhost:ro=a:\
:pa#0:sa#2097152:ba#8192:fa#1024:ca#8:da#4096:ra#10:oa=time:\
:ia:ta=4.3BSD:
Placed drive in external enclosure, setting id to 2
This step is pretty self explanatory, but I will describe it for those interested. I went to the manufacturers website for the drive, and got the specifications for how to set the jumpers. In this case, the only jumper I needed to add was one so that I could set the SCSI id to #2. Referencing the spec sheet, I also confirmed that no extra options were required or enabled, such as telling the drive to spin up, read only settings, capacity limitations, etc. This drive was going in an external enclosure with active termination, so I made sure drive termination was not enabled. The drive was then installed in the enclosure, and attached to the NeXT systems external SCSI port.
Low level format of the drive
Because I was unsure of what this drive was used for in the past, I chose to perform a low level format in order to return it to "factory fresh". Make sure you specify the correct disk, which in my case is sd1a, the second disk the system sees. Open up the terminal app, and issue the command below.
localhost# sdform /dev/rsd1a Initialize the drive with one 2G partition and create a filesystem
While still in the terminal app, issue the following command to initialize the disk.
localhost# disk -t SEAGATE -i /dev/rsd1aThe "disk" command will read the info in the disktab file and use it as a reference for how to perform this task. It will then label the disk, create the partitions, and finally format them for use. When finished, you will get the "initialization complete" message.
Use disk to add boot blocks to the drive
The disk command is used again to add the boot blocks to the drive. I guess you could also add the option to the command above and remove this step, but that is not what I did.
localhost# disk -b /dev/rsd1aMounted the drive and did the dump/restore command to copy things to it
Created a directory off of root called drive2, and mounted the new drive to it. Changed into the directory /drive2, and issued the dump/restore command to clone the contents onto the new drive.
localhost# mkdir drive2
localhost# mount /dev/sd1a /drive2
localhost# cd drive2
localhost# dump 0f - /dev/sd0a | restore -rf -
Removed the drive from the enclosure and swapped it into the slab for a test
Shut everything down in preparation to swap the drives. I removed the drive from the NeXT slab, and replaced it with the newly cloned drive from the enclosure. In order to get the drive to work internally, I had to consult the jumper specs. First the SCSI id was set to #1, the same as the internal drive was, so it would be the same place on the SCSI chain. I also had to set a jumper to enable the termination functions of the drive, and make sure it had terminating resistors installed on the bottom. I placed everything in temporarily, just in case I had to change things, plugged the external cd back in, and hit the power button. To my suprise, it booted up and started performing a disk check, and then the login screen appeared. I was able to login, and the apps seem to be functioning as they did on the old drive, just quite a bit faster.
Things to do, and other thoughts/issues
Work still needs to be done with the disktab entry so that I can actually get the second partition to work correctly. Everything seems to be correct, so possibly it is a problem with the particular drive I was using.
As others have stated on the fourm, this full height 7200rpm drive gets very hot with use. It can apparently get so hot as to distort the plastic top of the case near the hard disk. With this in mind, the next thing to do is to try to get the system booting with the drive in an external enclosure, instead of in the system.
Quote from: "nextchef"Here is a very rough first draft of what I did to clone the drive. I need to clean things up, and add a couple of links, but I figured I would release it to the wild for comment.
Thanks for sharing this Chef. Excellent write up. It really helps people who are going through the same issues as you. As they say, a private message helps one person, a public post helps many. Good job.
yes, thanks for the information. i've been planning on imaging my slabs drive, for backup purposes.
Thanks for the kind words from everyone concerning this. I am by no way an expert (unlike others in here), but I can do my part. If anyone sees any obvious errors, please let me know so I can make the necessary changes. I have a pdf version of the document as well (gotta love OpenOffice), for those who are interested. No difference in content, just a little prettier with proper bullets and headings to separate things out a little.
Chef
I'll take a pdf :)
Just as an update, I was able to get the next to boot without having a hard drive installed internally. All I had to do was add a 50pin terminator to the end of the cable, so that that end of the SCSI bus was terminated properly. The drive is now happy in a sun external enclosure, with a nice fan for cooling.
Chef
Quote from: "helf"I'll take a pdf :)
I can send it by email, so pm me with the address.
I need to find somewhere to host it online, so it is easier to get.
Chef
nextchef-
Thanks for an excellent write up of how to clone a drive to a larger disk. I see you were able to make the replacement drive the boot drive without going through the "load system software" step I had to resort to. But, like me, I guess you were not able to have more than 2GB useful space from your 4GB drive. Perhaps someone will be able to modify or add to your procedure so that we can have use of 4GB HD space someday.
Quote from: "idylukewild"nextchef-
Thanks for an excellent write up of how to clone a drive to a larger disk. I see you were able to make the replacement drive the boot drive without going through the "load system software" step I had to resort to. But, like me, I guess you were not able to have more than 2GB useful space from your 4GB drive. Perhaps someone will be able to modify or add to your procedure so that we can have use of 4GB HD space someday.
I am still working on that, just have not had a lot of time lately to devote to it. As far as I can tell, the disktab entry *should* work, but I always get errors when disk tries to lay a filesystem down on the second partition. I have tried changing the starting cylinder info a couple of different ways, with no better success. I do not fully understand all the details of creating disktab entries yet, so it is a lot of trial and error. I intend to try to install OS 4.2 on one of them, since it supports 4G partitions, and see if at least that works.
Too many projects (and most of them not fun computer related stuff :( ) and not enough time.
Chef
Great howto! Thanks for posting it. After Andreas scared me with regards to heat and the PSU I dug out a Quantum 1080S [1.02G 5400rpm] from the junk pile. Following you threads I was able to clone the drive no problems. I'll note that I did not have to mess with the disktab at all when I boot with the new drive as an external drive [in NeXTStep 3.3 p 3] the disk was found automatically and it asked me if I wanted to Initialize it. Answering yes made it create a 1gb partition and mount it all in one shot. From there is was just a matter of the "disk -b /dev/rsd1a", and the dump restore dance.
[Also Note I played with a 9gb Seagate and it was also automatically found and had a 2gb partition made. THe question becomes and I'll play with it again later, can you just use disk to hit the rsd1b... etc or not?]
-Mike
Quote from: "mgtremaine"Great howto! Thanks for posting it. After Andreas scared me with regards to heat and the PSU I dug out a Quantum 1080S [1.02G 5400rpm] from the junk pile. Following you threads I was able to clone the drive no problems. I'll note that I did not have to mess with the disktab at all when I boot with the new drive as an external drive [in NeXTStep 3.3 p 3] the disk was found automatically and it asked me if I wanted to Initialize it. Answering yes made it create a 1gb partition and mount it all in one shot. From there is was just a matter of the "disk -b /dev/rsd1a", and the dump restore dance.
[Also Note I played with a 9gb Seagate and it was also automatically found and had a 2gb partition made. THe question becomes and I'll play with it again later, can you just use disk to hit the rsd1b... etc or not?]
-Mike
Glad it was of help to you. As you found out, NS usually has no problems with disks smaller than 2g. Assuming you have a proper disktab defining multiple 2g partitions, then disk should be able to create multiple partitions. I say "should", because I was never able to get my 4G seagate drives to work this way, but that is just me. What I do not know is what disk would do to a drive that it had initialized previously without one, and created the standard 2g partition. I do not know if the drive would be wiped in the process, or just the other partitions created.
Chef
EDIT:
Sorry if that doesnt make much sense, but it has been a long day, and the brain is not quite working correctly.
Quote from: "nextchef"Assuming you have a proper disktab defining multiple 2g partitions, then disk should be able to create multiple partitions. I say "should", because I was never able to get my 4G seagate drives to work this way, but that is just me. What I do not know is what disk would do to a drive that it had initialized previously without one, and created the standard 2g partition. I do not know if the drive would be wiped in the process, or just the other partitions created.
Chef
EDIT:
Sorry if that doesnt make much sense, but it has been a long day, and the brain is not quite working correctly.
Makes sense, I think we are wondering about the same thing. I'll have to try it tomorrow. [Happily I have everything setup now so I can run headless and get in via telnet and/or the serial A port. So mucking about with the Unix of things can now been done easily]
Regarding the /etc/disktab mine is basically empty it has an entry for the optical drive and then a note saying that other entries are not need so long as the scsi target has the sense feature. [Or something like that.] Perhaps that really means yeah put any drive in and NS will give up to 1 2gb partition. If you want more you need to work for it :wink: ...
-Mike
Well here is the answer :D ...
I took 9g Seagate [SEAGATE ST39102LCSUN9.0G] using no disktab I issued this command.
disk -i -p 2000000 /dev/rsd1a
{I'd post the output from this but it is long, if anyone really wants to see it I'll post it.]
What happened was it created a 2gb /dev/rsd1a and then proceeded to create 1.7gb slices until it ran out of room. I was able to mount all of them and verify they worked.
betelgeuse:52# df
Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on
/dev/sd0a 1020237 200597 717616 22% /
/private/vm/swapfile 1020237 200597 717616 22% /private/vm/swapfile.front
/dev/sd1a 1980942 9 1782838 00% /disk1
/dev/sd1b 1694781 9 1525293 00% /disk2
/dev/sd1c 1694781 9 1525293 00% /disk3
/dev/sd1d 1694781 9 1525293 00% /disk4
/dev/sd1e 1694782 10 1525293 00% /disk5
So at this point I could make sd1a bootable and clone to it and having a nice amount of room. I'm not going to but hey atleast I know that answer to the question now.
Note this is with NeXTSTEP 3.3 p 3 I have no idea if this works with anything else.
-Mike
Very interesting that it created 1.7G partitions, and not 2.0G or 1.9G ones for the rest. Will have to hook up one of the 4G drives and give this a try without the disktab entry.
Thanks for the info.
Chef
Quote from: "nextchef"Very interesting that it created 1.7G partitions, and not 2.0G or 1.9G ones for the rest. Will have to hook up one of the 4G drives and give this a try without the disktab entry.
Thanks for the info.
Chef
I think that the disk command has some logic that calculates the total size and forces all secondary partitions to be of equal size.
I tried it again with a 18G [Quantum Atlas III] this time it made 2gb partitions but get this is it did a->h making 8 of them and the first and the last one are not mountable... I'm seeing if this can bee fixed.
/dev/sd1b 1914928 9 1723426 00% /disk2
/dev/sd1c 1914929 9 1723427 00% /disk3
/dev/sd1d 1914929 9 1723427 00% /disk4
/dev/sd1e 1914929 9 1723427 00% /disk5
/dev/sd1f 1914929 9 1723427 00% /disk6
/dev/sd1g 1914929 9 1723427 00% /disk7
-Mike
Added: doing "newfs /dev/rsd1a" remade filesystem on the first partition. And I was able to mount it.
/dev/sd1a 1941228 9 1747096 00% /disk1
I'm out time for today [my son gets out of school in 30mins] so no more playing around with this today. :P
Hello NeXTchef.
While reading Your great comments on "cloning" You gave me some hints on how to solve my problems I'm actually facing while setting up my harddrives for the cube and the station. Maybe I will clone my system the way You did later on...
One question comes to mind:
You mentioned changing the disk from external eclosure to the inside of the slab - and changing the SCSI ID from "2" to "1" - this is what I'm trying exactly right now while writing these lines, efforts to be posted later.
But You also mentioned the jumper settings of the drive, more exactly the termination thing. My Seagate has those jumpers, in fact one generally "terminating" the chain and several others saying something about "BUS power to drive" and stuff like this. Which settings did You use? Just terminating?
Thank You very much!
J
Quote from: "Jenne"Hello NeXTchef.
While reading Your great comments on "cloning" You gave me some hints on how to solve my problems I'm actually facing while setting up my harddrives for the cube and the station. Maybe I will clone my system the way You did later on...
One question comes to mind:
You mentioned changing the disk from external eclosure to the inside of the slab - and changing the SCSI ID from "2" to "1" - this is what I'm trying exactly right now while writing these lines, efforts to be posted later.
But You also mentioned the jumper settings of the drive, more exactly the termination thing. My Seagate has those jumpers, in fact one generally "terminating" the chain and several others saying something about "BUS power to drive" and stuff like this. Which settings did You use? Just terminating?
Thank You very much!
J
In my situation, it was required that the drive be set to provide termination when inside the station. According to my scribbled notes on the seagate drive spec, It appears I set it on the default setting of "Terminator power from the drive". The drive is currently not in the slab, as it was easier to do all the switching around with it in an external enclosure, so I can not visually verify these settings.
Chef
As mentioned before "cloning" a complete system is indeed pretty straight forward as long as you don't have to deal with disktab entries - in other words: it is simple as long as someone uses a compatible harddisk with not more than 2 GB capacity.
What I did:
I installed a complete system of NEXTSTEP 3.3 along with the developer packages and the Enterprise Objects Framework (complete with developer packages, too). I've been using the internal harddisk for this step.
After this I connected another compatible harddrive to my cube on the external SCSI BUS, terminated with an active terminator plugged to the enclosure and set to a higher SCSI ID than the internal drive of the cube (the internal was set to ID 1, the external to ID 4). I powered up this enclosure, after this the cube and went on to the root login.
Using DiskBuilder.app I simply installed the complete system (take a look at the options available while maximizing the DiskBuilder.app window!). It took some time but was much faster than installing from CD.
After "cloning" I powered down all parts of the system and reconfigured the external harddisk to SCSI ID 1, terminated with jumpers, obtaining the termination power from the drive (at least some sort of default factory state for most Seagagte harddisks as I found out). Then I plugged the drive to my NeXTstation and fired it up:
everything is working as expected, just the passwords for the "root" and the "me" account have been set back to "empty". No user accounts and their home directories have been cloned so these one have to be set up again.
Pretty good time saving operation to make a complete and bootable backup of a clean and untouched system!
J
Hello
I got a "new" 9GB HD SCSI 50 pin, IBM DNES-309170, internal terminated and I would like to know if there is any known issue with this HD
Thanks for the Help
I've finally figured out how to take a cheap ebay 4Gb drive, clone all of my NeXT software onto it, and have it work as a 2Gb boot drive with a desktop visible spare 2GB partition for storage. This is a long post because I tried to be complete so someone like me who is not a Unix user can do it. Any corrections or additions to this procedure are welcome.
This is my recipe for making a NeXTStep 3.3 hard drive from the dirt-cheap and readily available Seagate ST15150N (they are almost always available from ebay for less than $10). The method I give below yields a boot drive with two partitions, each with 2GB. It does include the dreaded "disktab file mod", but I found I needed to modify the disktab file in order to have the drive partitioned into 2, 2GB partitions rather than 3 equal partitions of less than 2 GB each.
1) Make a fresh install of NS3.3 with patches on computer in boot drive. I did this with a set of install disks I bought through ebay. My apparent 'clone of a clone of a clone' (a hard drive one of my NeXTstations came with, the hard drive was named "Kimba", I've seen that name somewhere else?) which had NS3.2 updated by me to NS3.3 then patched with Apple patch 3 may have been corrupted. I didn't seem to be able to get the 'disk' command to work properly until I made a clean install of NS3.3 on a reformatted drive. It could have been some other problem, like sloppy command entry, but my ability to get a 4GB drive formatted to two 2GB drives coincided with my fresh install of NS3.3 and Apple patch #3.
2) The convention for NeXT hardware is to have the boot drive identified as SCSI id "1" (so the computer will boot from an external drive with SCSI id 0 if needed). Make sure the drive (SCSI id 1, boot drive) is terminated. Make sure your highest SCSI drive is also terminated and no other SCSI device is terminated. SCSI id 1, boot drive, is the drive that you want to 'clone'. Its OS and all other content will be cloned to an external drive that can then be immediately tested as the boot drive when its id is set to "0". The goal is to have the clone drive work as the boot drive when installed in this (or another) NeXT computer.
3) Mount a Seagate ST15150N (4.4 GB) drive that you want to make into a bootable clone mounted in an external case with the SCSI id "2". If this is the only other SCSI device in the chain, terminate it. If not, be sure to terminate the highest numbered SCSI device in your chain of SCSI devices connected to the NeXT computer.
4) While on the subject of terminators (which can include setting jumpers at disk drives) I find "terminator power from SCSI bus" is a jumper setting that works for disk drives I have installed in NeXT machines and external enclosures. I don't know what other terminator power settings work or don't work.
5) Turn on the external drive FIRST. Power on NeXT computer. Log in as Root, and make sure you are in unix expert mode (select from preferences menu). After you log in "disk drive is unreadable" will appear, select "ignore".
6) Find the unix id of your drives (devices='dev') by looking at the device info found from /usr/adm/messages. Your boot drive will probably be "/dev/sd0" and your external drive will probably be "/dev/sd1" depending on their order in the SCSI chain.
7) If the drive is mounted you can also confirm its id by entering "df" in the console:
localhost:1# df
Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on
/dev/sd0a 2036476 557648 1275180 30% /
/dev/sd0b 2036476 9 1832819 00% /disk2
/private/vm/swapfile 2036476 557648 1275180 30% /private/vm/swapfile.front
/dev/sd1a 1441632 557638 739830 43% /Disk
/dev/rsd2h 98080 3108 94972 3% /blankzip
8 ) Even if not mounted (i.e. have not run 'disk' command yet) do scsimodes to see the disk is there (and to check for the number of bytes per sector).
localhost:2# scsimodes /dev/rsd1a
SCSI information for /dev/rsd1a
Drive type: SEAGATE ST15150N
520 bytes per sector
106 sectors per track
21 tracks per cylinder
3712 cylinder per volume (including spare cylinders)
9 spare sectors per cylinder
21 alternate tracks per volume
8242658 usable sectors on volume
9) I ran into problems with trying to format and partition my drive since it had been formatted to 520 bytes/sector. The following is a comment from the NeXTstep 3.3 disktab entry. It gives a clue to why I was unable to partition my drive with the "disk" command:
"# ss sector size -- MUST ALWAYS BE DEV_BSIZE (1024) FOR NOW"
To complicate things further, the NS3.3 'sdform' was not able to change the format of the 520 byte/sector drive to the requisite 1024 byte/sector required to use the 'disk' command. Fortunately I was able to download the freeware program 'sdformat' (available from
http://sounds.wa.com/additional.html and NeXT archive sites). 'sdformat' is designed to do a low level format with sector size of your choice.
10) Install sdformat and use the 'chmod' command to change permissions so that you can actually use the 'sdformat' command.
localhost:4# ls -l /usr/local/bin/sdformat
-rw-r--r-- 1 root 139264 Jan 14 2003 /usr/local/bin/sdformat
localhost:5# chmod 777 /usr/local/bin/sdformat
localhost:6# ls -l /usr/local/bin/sdformat
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root 139264 Jan 14 2003 /usr/local/bin/sdformat*
11) 'umount' disk to format. If the disk is mounted 'sdformat' cannot format the disk.
localhost:3# umount /dev/sd1a
12) As is commented into the original NS3.3 disktab entry, a 1024 bytes/sector format is needed if "disk" is used to initialize the disk, partition it, and add a boot block. To format the drive to 1024 bytes/sector, in console, enter:
localhost:4# /usr/local/bin/sdformat –i2 -b1024 –f
where '-i2' indicates scsi id number is set to '2' on the drive (by jumper or switch on external drive case). –b1024 shows that I want to change sector size to 1024 bytes. Formating the entire 4GB disk with my NeXT turbo took just about one hour.
13) scsimodes now shows the drive has been formatted with the requisite 1024 bytes per sector.
localhost:2# scsimodes /dev/rsd1a
SCSI information for /dev/rsd1a
Drive type: SEAGATE ST15150N
1024 bytes per sector
56 sectors per track
21 tracks per cylinder
3712 cylinder per volume (including spare cylinders)
9 spare sectors per cylinder
21 alternate tracks per volume
4388759 usable sectors on volume
14) Write or find the correct disktab file for your drive. This example is for 2*2GB partitions of Seagate ST15150N drive, pretty much written as in web source of disktab files (
http://deadstart.net/NeXT/disktab/). This differs from the published disktab entry in that I have used a different label for the disk. The label I use is more consistent with what is written in NeXTanswers article #1849, "Adding On without Flipping Out" by Mark Tacchi ("1849_Adding_Disks" from
http://next.68k.org/nextstuff/otto/html/pub/NeXTanswers/AsciiFiles/Journals/1849_Adding_Disks.txt). More importantly, the third partition is not included in my version because I found the third partition sometimes wouldn't 'take' for some reason with some attempts. I don't know why. It could have been due to some inconsistency on my part.
# SEAGATE ST15150N
ST15150N|ST15150N-1024|SEAGATE ST15150N-1024:\
:ty=fixed_rw_scsi:nc#3712:nt#21:ns#56:ss#1024:rm#7200:\
:fp#160:bp#0:ng#0:gs#0:ga#0:ao#0:\
:os=sdmach:z0#32:z1#96:hn=localhost:ro=a:\
:pa#0:sa#2097152:ba#8192:fa#1024:ca#8:da#3678:ra#10:oa=time:\
:ia:ta=4.3BSD:\
:pb#2097152:sb#2097152:bb#8192:fb#1024:cb#8:db#3678:rb#10:ob=time:\
:ib:tb=4.3BSD:\
15)initialize disk with the following command:
localhost:3# disk -i -t ST15150N /dev/rsd1a
The 'disk' command uses the disktab file to initialize the drive so it has 2 partitions (2*2GB) and also adds a boot block (according to the manual, see 'man disk'). However, use disk a second time with the '-b' qualifier since I did use the above command a few times and no boot block was written. [Again, I don't know why there was an inconsistency, perhaps I was inconsistent in my technique.] I use the following command to write a boot block on the new drive:
localhost:3# disk -b /dev/rsd1a
It may be that NS3.3 Makedisk can make a disk with 2*2GB only if the total capacity of the drive is exactly 4GB. If it is 4.01 GB for instance, it might try but it cannot. I have not had any luck making a disk with Makedisk on a drive of more than 4.00 GB. I have sacrificed about 200MB of useful disk space on the Seagate drive, as I have mentioned, because I was having problems getting a third partition with some disks for some reason I couldn't easily figure out.
16) At reboot with external drive attached, "Disk" icon appears and says that it has 1.75GB available. Note that only the first partition of the 2 partition disk is mounted. I used Kenjay's excellent directions (that appear earlier in this thread) for writing the fstab file so that both partitions appear on the desktop when the computer is booted.
17) Next I used nextchef's method to clone the boot drive including NS OS to the external drive, as shown below.
18 ) Make a directory called 'drive 2' on the boot drive.
localhost:7# mkdir drive2
19) Use the umount command if the disk is already mounted because you did a reboot after initializing the disk.
localhost:8# umount /dev/sd1a
Mount the freshly formatted and initialized external drive to "/drive2".
localhost:9# mount /dev/sd1a /drive2
20) Now that the drive is mounted, I use 'df' to make sure.
localhost:10# df
Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on
/dev/sd0b 1441633 9 1297460 00% /disk2
/dev/sd0a 1441632 557641 739827 43% /
/private/vm/swapfile 1441632 557641 739827 43% /private/vm/swapfile.front
/dev/sd0c 1441633 9 1297460 00% /disk3
/dev/rsd2h 98080 3084 94996 3% /blankzip
/dev/sd1a 2036476 9 1832819 00% /drive2
df shows that the drive is mounted (first partition only) as sd1a, a 2GB partition which will be the root drive when cloning is finished. The second 2GB partion has not yet been mounted so it does not show up from the df command. It does not need to be mounted yet because the clone of NS3.3 will be made onto the first partition only.
21) Change directory to 'drive2' and do a dump|restore to clone drive.
localhost:11# cd /drive2
localhost:12# dump 0f - /dev/sd0a | restore -rf -
DUMP: Date of this level 0 dump: Sun Jan 21 01:29:05 2007
...
DUMP: 15.69% done, finished in 1:12
...
DUMP: DUMP: 579743 tape blocks on 1 tape(s)
DUMP: DUMP IS DONE
localhost:13#
22) Shut down computer and turn off external drive. Change SCSI id of external drive to "0" and terminate it. It needs to be terminated because now only the old boot drive (SCSI id #1) and the clone of it (SCSI id 0) exist in the SCSI chain and the highest and lowest in the chain must be terminated. Now reboot and the clone of the original drive should boot up the computer. Now you need to modify the /etc/fstab file to automatically mount the second 2GB partition at boot.
23) As mentioned, I used Kenjay's partition automount technique to make the second 2GB partition show up on the desktop automatically. Works like a charm.
Quote
To create additional space on a 4.3GB hard drive [NeXT] -
( Notes: 0 is a zero in all cases - text after # is a comment, don't type it) .
1. Boot
2. Login in as root
3. Open a terminal window.
4. Type the following in the terminal window:
cd / # make sure you are in root
mkdir disk2 # create the mount point
cd /etc # get into the etc directory
cp fstab fstab.old # make a backup of fstab
chmod 644 fstab # change permissions on fstab to make it writeable
5. edit the fstab file
To edit the fstab file do the following:
1. In File Viewer click on the etc folder -
2. In the etc directory structure double click on fstab file [the first one - with no extension]
3. This should bring up the NeXT edit program and the fstab file will be displayed in the edit window as follows:
#
# DO NOT DELETE THIS FILE, IT IS REQUIRED FOR BOOTING
#
# This file contains information used to mount local hard disks.
# Consult your Network and System Administration manual
# for information on adding local disks. Information on the format
# of entries in this file can also be found in the fstab man page.
#
/dev/sd0a / 4.3 rw,noquota,noauto 0 1
Add the following line after the last line above:
/dev/sd0b /disk2 4.3 rw,noquota 0 2
Save the file [save - not "save as"] and quit the NeXT edit program.
6. Type the following in the terminal window:
chmod 444 /etc/fstab # change permissions back to read only
7. Reboot the system in verbose mode. Watch to see if the /dev/sd0b partition is mounted on /disk2 and note errors [if any].
8. Login as root.
9. Double Click on the disk2 folder in the file manager and it should tell you that you have +/- 2GB of space available.
10. Optionally open a terminal window and type: df to get information on the mounted drives.
11. Additionally you may want to run a fsck on the new partition to verify its integrity. Type: fsck /dev/sd0b in a terminal window.
- You must enable the Unix Expert mode [in preferences] to see the etc folder.
Do the following:
1. In File Viewer click NextApps
2. In the NeXTApps directory tree double click Preferences.app
3. In the Preferences window scroll the bar right until you see the Unix tab
4. In the Unix selection check Unix Expert and Large File system
5. Close/Hide the Prefernces app and you should now see the etc directory in your root file system directory.
NOTE: *** [To name the new "disk" to as you wish - change the name of "disk2' to whatever you want.
IF you have already created a name [in this case - disk2, and you wish to change it - do the following:
1. Edit the fstab file first. Change /disk2 to /whatever
2. Type: mkdir /whatever in a terminal window
3. reboot
The partition will now be mounted on the /whatever folder and you
can delete the now empty /disk2 folder.]***
24) By looking at the device info found from /usr/adm/messages I have found that the computer thinks the freshly made 2x2GB boot partition has "Disk Capacity 189MB, Device Block 1024". The workspace info panel from "File Viewer" in NS OS" indicates "Disk: 0.150MB". Obviously the figures are wrong and the actual size of the disk is seen by clicking on the icon for the disk in File Viewer and reading "1.21 GB available on hard disk" for the NS 3.3 partition and "1.75 GB available on hard disk" for the "disk2" icon (for the other partition of the 4 GB disk). Other than the false "disk capacity" message, the 2x2GB Seagate ST15150N works perfectly and I have had no problems loading and using software on the with the disks. I've made five disks with this method - that should be a lifetime supply for my NeXT computers.
Luke
wow! *claps* nice post.
site admins, we really need a 'tutorials' section of the main site. could list off all the posts like this one and the overclock ones and such.
Nice post idylukewild, and great detective work on your part.
I will have to grab that version of sdform and play around with my ST15150N drives when I get a chance. Kinda busy with my new "pile o next" stuff at the moment.
I second the request for a tutorials section that helf made, as it would be a good place for guides like this and the more common questions asked.
Great work idylukewild
Chef
Yeah, that's some interesting findings there idylukewild!
I'm still perplexed to hell with the "520" bytes per sector thing. I wonder if that meant that almost half the drive space was wasted (before you formatted it with 1024 byte sectors) ?! Or perhaps it was like "overclocking" the storage and getting 8bytes more out of each sector (like in the old DOS days using MaxiSomething to get 440KB disks out of 360KB 5.25" disks).
Evidently the drives could have been salvaged from an IBM AS/400 system since they use the 520 bytes/sector format. I bought 5 drives for $20.00 and, if I remember correctly ~$7 shipping. The reformatted and cloned hard drives have been working perfectly in my NeXT computers.
Well, what I meant is: is it even possible to low level format a drive with 520byte sectors? I thought only 512 and 1024 was possible...
Hi all,
thanks to all of the participants in this thead and especially to nextchef! Following your instructions, I was able to clone my NextStep 3.3 install from a Quantum LPS540 500 MB Hard Disk to a IBM DDRS 34560 4.5 GB Hard Disk.
I hooked the disk up to the internal SCSI-Port chain with the original drive still in place using a multi-point-SCSI cable and an external enclosure for power supply.
The IBM drive was placed between the Controller and the original QUANTUM drive and I set SCSI ID to 4 with no termination. The disk was immediately recognized by the Nextstation, but with a capacity of only 261 MB.
So I first tried to reconfigure the initial /etc/disktab entry for the SEAGATE ST15150N drive according to the technical specifications found at
http://www.hgst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/85256AB8006A31E587256AA400595BA0/$file/ddrs_spw.pdf. But the disk was still not recognized by disk tool, once the OS booted.
After that I finally found a 14 year old post on the comp.sys.next.sysadmin group:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/comp.sys.next.sysadmin/pMB-3TZTkTsIBM DDRS-34560:\
:ty=fixed_rw_scsi:nc#8387:nt#5:ns#218:ss#512:rm#7200:\
:fp#320:bp#0:ng#0:gs#0:ga#0:ao#0:\
:os=sdmach:z0#64:z1#192:ro=a:\
:pa#0:sa#4194304:ba#8192:fa#1024:ca#16:da#8192:ra#10:\
:oa=time:ia:ta=4.3BSD:\
:pb#4194304:sb#4194304:bb#8192:fb#1024:cb#16:db#8192:rb#10:\
:ob=time:ib:tb=4.3BSD:\
:pc#8388608:sc#536071:bc#8192:fc#1024:cc#16:dc#8192:rc#10:\
:oc=time:ic:tc=4.3BSD:I copied the disktab to the nextstation and disk utility was able to init the disk, copy over the boot sectors and finally I started the dump process. I left office at the evening, and when I returned this morning, a friendly message "DUMP succeeded" made me happy.
Rebooting the system, it shows still 261 MB during bootup but once booted, I can access all 4.5 GB in three partitions.
Thanks again and I hope this information might be helpful for other people trying to clone their existing NextStep Setup to a larger IBM DDRS 34560 (which are quite common against the hard to get SEAGATE ST15150N).
Greetings
atarimaniac