07/29/97 Seminar - HP Diagnostics

Several packages exist for doing diagnostics on the HP machines. The following is far from a complete list, but should at least give you enough useful tools to find out what's breaking on your machine:

ODE: Online Diagnostic Environment
The ODE is available through the IPL when you first boot your machine. It does not come with the default HPUX machine, and must be installed separately. The bundle is called "OnlineDiag".
To load the ODE, just boot your machine, with "boot pri isl". At the IPL prompt, enter "ODE". From there you can type "ls" and get a list of the installed modules. All the modules do is test things, and not very extensively, either.

ioscan: I/O Scan
ioscan allows you to see what your HP thinks is attached to your running machine. It shows you the "Hardware Path" and what the device is that is located at that path:

         [root] locutus:~ > ioscan
         H/W Path    Class                  Description
         ==============================================
                     bc                     
         8           bc                     I/O Adapter
         8/0             unknown            GSC-to-PCI Bus Bridge
         8/12            ext_bus            GSC Fast/Wide SCSI Interface
         8/12.5             target          
         8/12.5.0              disk         SEAGATE ST34371W
         8/12.6             target          
         8/12.6.0              disk         SEAGATE ST34371W
         8/12.7             target          
         8/12.7.0              ctl          Initiator
         8/16            ba                 Core I/O Adapter

Useful to see what's still working on a machine.

xstm: X Support Tools Manager
STM is installed with OnlineDiag also. This browser allows you to more extensively test all aspects of your HP while it's running, including RAM, disks, video cards, IO buses, etc. "cstm" can be run if X is not working on your machine.
sysdiag: System Diagnostics
This is like the ODE, only you can run it on an running HP. It is about as useful as the ODE, except that more things are visible, but also unavailable ("missing license" -- only HP techs are allowed to run the diagnostics).

A lot of online help is available from the HPUX LROM. The LROM, if you haven't used it before, is like super MAN pages. It has pictures, and it's so terse.

There were some questions asked that I answered by email later:

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Last modified: Wednesday, September 10 1997