installing 4.3 on uvax

[narten at arthur.cs.purdue.edu.UUCP]

The easiest way to get 4.3 onto a uVAX is to get Ultrix up first, then use
it to bootstrap 4.3. Note that 4.3 supports the uVAX II, but not the uVAX I.
It also helps to have a VAX already running 4.3. A set of bootstrapping
floppies comes with Ultrix. Once Ultrix is up, you can ship 4.3 over across
your Ethernet and boot the new system. One must be a little bit careful in
bootstrapping; 4.3 and Ultrix are not quite compatible and if you screw up
the machine may hang and you must reload Ultrix from floppies and start
over. (e.g. a 4.3 kernel doesn't much care for the Ultrix init). It would be
wise to backup any user files before  you begin.

Here are (roughly..its been 6 months since i did this) the steps:

1) get Ultrix up
2) On the root partition, create /bin.43 and /etc.43 and
rdist over those directories from a 4.3 (VAX) machine. Also, get /usr/bin.43
over in a similar manner. If your root partition is too small to have both
the new and old copies of the directories, you will have to get some more 
space. You can probably find files in /etc and /bin that are not critcal. 
For instance, cut down the size of the host table, get rid of /etc/dump*,
etc.

NOTE, the 4.3 rdist thinks that rdist is in /usr/ucb on all machines. On non
4.3 machines, it is in /usr/local (or /usr/local/bin). On the Ultrix
machine, mv or link rdist into /usr/ucb before attempting to rdist.

3) Get a 4.3 kernel onto the uVAX. Be sure that it has been compiled with
the VAX630 option. I don't believe it is in the generic kernel that 
comes with the 4.3 distribution.
4) Fix up the rc.local, fstab, and ttys file in /etc.43 for your 
machine's configuration.
5) Take that plunge! That is, issue the following commands and boot the 4.3
kernel. This is the point of no return. Once you have issued *some* of these
comands, or the machine gets rebooted or crashes, your machine may hang.

mv /etc /etc.ultrix
mv /etc.43 /etc
mv /bin /bin.ultrix
/bin.ultrix/mv /bin.43 /bin
mv /usr/bin /usr/bin.ultrix
mv /usr/bin.43 /usr/bin
mv /vmunix /vmunix.ultrix
mv /vmunix.43 /vmunix
/etc/reboot

6) Not all the major device numbers are the same in Ultrix/4.3. You may have
to delete entries in /dev and use the 4.3 MAKEDEV to put them back in
correctly. I know that the numbers for the DHV-11 are different. They were
the same for the RD-52 and DEQNA though.
7) You should now have 4.3 up. You still need to get the rest of 4.3 over.
Again, rdist comes in real handy. you can rdist /lib /usr/local/*, etc.

-- 
Thomas Narten
narten at purdue.EDU or {ucbvax, ihnp4, allegra}!purdue!narten