Old EZRA SPARCstation Setup

This system should only be used if the EZRA2 workstation is not available

This section covers SPARCstation setup, cabling, booting, shutdown, and some system administration of the old SPARCstation known as ``ezra''. The ezra system consists of a CPU (or ``pizza box''), monitor, keyboard, mouse, external disk drive, Exabyte tape drive, CD-ROM reader, and Ethernet adapter box. This sytem should only be used if the ezra2 workstation is not available.


Cabling

WARNING: Before connecting any cables, be sure to ground yourself and the cable shields to discharge any static electricity.

  1. Plug the 120V power cable for each device into a surge-protected power strip. In the data room, plug the power strip into the Computer AC Power strip.

  2. Connect the monitor and keyboard cables to the back of the CPU box.

  3. SCSI devices (disk drive, Exabyte, and CD-ROM): The cabling must be connected so that the device at the end of the cabling chain is terminated. With the available cables, the following setup works best. The two connectors on the back of each SCSI device are identical; it doesn't matter which cable is connected to which connector.

    a. SCSI Cable 1: (Miniature connector on both ends.) Connect from CPU to CD-ROM.

    b. SCSI Cable 2: (Miniature connector on one end, full-sized connector on other.) Connect from CD-ROM to Exabyte.

    c. SCSI Cable 3: (Full-sized connectors on both ends) Connect from Exabyte to Disk Drive.

    d. Plug the SCSI terminator into the empty connector on the disk drive.

  4. Ethernet: Plug the Ethernet transceiver into the CPU. Put a T on the BNC connector and an ethernet terminator on one side of the T. Ezra can now be booted, without actually having the network connected.

  5. Serial Ports: If in the data room, setting up for observing, plug the telescope computer serial port interface cable in serial port A on the CPU. The serial port cable should NOT have a null modem adapter. If you want run the MIRELLA offset guider program from ezra, plug the SAM terminal cable into serial port B (with a sex-changer but no null modem). Alternatively, you can plug the printer cable, WITH a null-modem adapter, into serial port B.

System boot

Turn on the Monitor and CPU, then the CD-ROM, Exabyte, and External disk power. The system should boot automatically from the external disk, and display the ezra login: prompt at the end. If something is wrong, error messages will appear before this prompt.

Boot problems

Some things to try if the system does not boot properly:

  1. SCSI problems:

    a. As the system is booting, press the L1 and A keys on the keyboard simultaneously.

    b. If the prompt is >, then type

    > n

    for the ROM-based command mode. (Type only the bold-face characters and follow the last character with a carriage return). An ``ok'' prompt will appear.

    c. Type

    ok probe-scsi

    This will display a list of detected SCSI devices. The two disk drives, CD-ROM, and Exabyte should be listed. If they are not, hopefully this just means the cables are connected improperly.

    d. Type

    ok boot sd(0,1,0)

    to boot off the external disk. After several minutes of checking file systems, the ezra login: prompt should appear and you're ready to go.

  2. Ethernet problems: The message hostname le0: bad or missing cable, means the CPU cannot detect the transceiver box on its ethernet port. If the box is connected, but is not actually connected to the PC or any other network, you should not see this message. Make the sure the transceiver is connected as securely as possible (you are correct, it doesn't lock very well), and try the spare if necessary.

System shutdown

Turning the power off without synching the disks can potentially damage the file system and should only be done as a last resort. To shut down properly log in as any user (scuser will do), and type:

scuser> haltezra

Wait about 30 sec for the > prompt to appear, then it is safe to power down the system.

The next time the system boots after a haltezra command, it will check the entire file system, a process that takes several minutes. If you want to skip these checks during the next system boot, use the fasthalt command instead of haltezra.