On Sun, 27 Mar 1994, Huw Davies wrote:
> I am attempting to reinstall Ultrix 4.2A on a DECstation 5000/240. This
> system is used to support undergraduate teaching but has had its security
> compromised (the elm autoreply bug) and we have decided to reinstall from
> CD. This system is configured as follows:
>
> DECstation 5000/240 64Mb memory Prestoserve.
> Disks are Seagate Wren 9s (about 2Gb formated).
>
> I have partitioned the disk with partition a at 200Mb, b 300Mb, d and e
> and f 450Mb. I have no difficulty installing the first phase (copying from
> CD into /) but I have encountered problems installing the supported
> subsets into /usr and /var. The symptom is a long list of SCSI/CAM errors
> (I haven't included them here as they involve a lot of typing. If anyone
> wants exact details, ask).
The general consensus was that if I ignored the errors it would be OK.
This did not work in general - one of the attempted installations which I
started just before going home was still running (and generating lots of
errors) the next morning (about 15 hours).
The solution that worked for me (I'm too careful to say the correct
solution) was from Andrew Moore <andrew@rdt.monash.edu.au> who said that
there were known problems with SCSI CAM resets and that there was a patch
available from Digitial. A quick call to TSC and half an hour later the
patch arrived via e-mail. Rebuilding the kernel with the patched SCSI CAM
and all now seems OK.
The morals:
1) Read the security based newsgroups (preferably before your users). Had
I read about the elm autoreply bug (feature?) a couple of days earlier the
problem might have been avoided.
2) Keep a 'clean' copy of all your configuration files. There are lots
more than you imagine (I've just discovered another one - /etc/ntp.conf)
that wasn't restored.
Thanks to all those who took the effort to reply. I hope that I can be as
helpful to someone in trouble.
Huw Davies | Huw.Davies@latrobe.edu.au
Computing Services | Phone: +61 3 479 1500 Fax: +61 3 479 1999
La Trobe University | I own an Alfa to keep me poor in a monetary
Melbourne Australia | sense, but rich in so many other ways
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