Installation manual

Before Upgrading the OpenVMS VAX Operating System

5.1 Cautions and Restrictions

5.1.4 Operator and Accounting Logs

The upgrade procedure deletes all the operator and accounting logs. To save

these ﬁles, move them to a user directory before you start the upgrade.

5.1.5 Special Testing and Debugging Files

Before you perform an upgrade, remove or rename any special testing

or debugging ﬁles that you might have in any of the SYS$SPECIFIC: or

SYS$SYSROOT: directories. Files in these directories are used in place of

the ﬁles in SYS$COMMON: directories.

As a minimum, you should check the following directories:

SYS$SYSROOT:[SYSEXE]

SYS$SYSROOT:[SYS$LDR]

Because the upgrade procedure affects the SYS$COMMON: directories and

does not check or alter the contents of the SYS$SPECIFIC: or SYS$SYSROOT:

directories, any testing or debugging ﬁles that you have in these directories

remain there unchanged until you remove or rename them. If you do not remove

or rename these ﬁles, your system might behave in an unpredictable manner.

5.1.6 Cluster Considerations

The following cautions apply when you are upgrading a cluster system:

• The upgrade procedure does not work across the network. The network is not

available during the upgrade, so you must have the save sets available locally

or on the InfoServer.

• If the node you are upgrading is a cluster member, the upgrade procedure

checks the previously set values of several system parameters at the

beginning of the upgrade (see Section 7.2.) If any of the values are less

than that required to upgrade to OpenVMS VAX Version 7.3, you are given

the choice of continuing or canceling the upgrade. If you choose to continue

the upgrade, the entire upgrade might not be completed and the cluster might

be left in a hung state.

• Before you start the upgrade procedure in an OpenVMS Cluster environment,

you must shut down all the nodes that boot from the system disk you are

upgrading, including the node you perform the upgrade on.

5.1.7 Save Set Location

If you move the OpenVMS VAX save sets from the distribution media to the

system disk or some other disk before beginning the upgrade, the save sets must

be in the [000000] directory of the disk, or the upgrade will fail.

Do not attempt to use VMSINSTAL with OPTION G to transfer OpenVMS VAX

save sets to another media type; doing so produces an unusable system. Instead,

you can use the DCL command COPY to transfer save sets to another media

type.

Before Upgrading the OpenVMS VAX Operating System 5–3