| Title |
My new QNX2 node is not showing up on my network. |
| Ref. No. |
QNX.000009329 |
| Category(ies) |
Installation, Configuration |
| Issue |
We just added a new machine to our QNX2.15 network, but it's not showing up. What do we do now?
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| Solution |
A new machine may not appear to be on the network for several possible reasons. Let's see if we can tackle the problem systematically.
Your network license must be large enough to support the new machine. If you purchased a Network Expansion Disk, be sure to run the netsize utility on each machine in your network that boots from its own hard disk. To check the size of your current license, you can run tsk info on each server and look at the "Nodes" column.
You should also check that you have the following commands in the sys.init.x file for the boot node:
x09nacc 3 +read +write
x09search 3 +r
These commands are required if machines need to access each other across the network.
To verify that your machine has actually joined the network, check the alive list for the network. If the machine doesn't appear there, make sure you're running poller. If you are, and if you have a large network, remember that it may take a while for poller to get around to seeing that node. (Note that you can put the command alive +up in the sys.init.x file for any node. When the machine boots successfully, poller is informed right away and updates the alive list immediately.)
If your node doesn't appear in the alive list, you should first check that you've programmed the network card with the correct OS image file to boot and with a node number that doesn't conflict with an existing one. If both of these check out okay, and if the machine has QNX resident on the hard disk, try booting from disk. If you can boot from disk, it's probably a network problem.
If the problem seems to be network-related, first check the various hardware components that make up the network. Is the network card properly seated? Is the network card set to its default address? If so, is it in conflict with any other devices on your machine (e.g. hard disk controller, smartcard)? Try removing the card and snatching that memory location to verify that nothing else is using that address. Also, make sure that memory caching is disabled in the area where the card is located.
You should also check whether the network card is using the correct interrupt. We ship the card to use interrupt 7, but you can configure it to use interrupt 5. Also, look at the LEDs on the back of the card to check if the card is functioning properly. The red LED signifies CPU access and should be blinking occasionally. It should not be steadily lit. The green LED signifies network access. It should be steady, but dimming occasionally when a packet is sent or received.
x09
If the LEDs indicate a problem, then you should try replacing the network card. If you still have a problem, try plugging the machine straight into the server node. Does the machine boot properly?
If it does, the problem lies with the connection hardware-either a cable or a hub. Try replacing these and boot again.
If the machine still doesn't boot properly after you've checked your network hardware, there are other things to try. But first, it's useful to understand what happens in the actual boot procedure.
When you boot the machine, it performs its POST procedure and does its BIOS scan. When the BIOS scan gets to the network card, the ROM BIOS on the card takes control and sends a packet to the server node requesting a bootup with the OS file image specified in NVRAM (setup menu). If your bus speed is greater than 8 MHz, it's possible that the machine didn't transfer control to the network card ROM-we don't guarantee that our cards will run at bus speeds greater than 8 MHz.
If the host is set with verbose mode on (netboot +v &), then you'll see the boot request acknowledged. At this point, the OS file image is downloaded to your machine. If you create a shell file that simply does a loop of the fopen utility, you can see the OS image file being opened and closed as it's being downloaded. On your machine you'll see "Node xx" (where xx is the node number) displayed with a flashing dot. This dot indicates that the OS image file is being downloaded. When this operation is finished, the screen will clear and a flashing cursor will appear in the top left corner. If the system hangs at this point then you should do the following:
1)x09Make sure that there's no caching enabled on the motherboard that will interfere with the OS memory. If in doubt, remove all caching configured in the motherboard CMOS and try again. You may also try booting a real mode version (pcat) of the OS.
2)x09Do a tsk info on the host machine. What value do you see under Nodes? Does the node number on the booting machine fall within the range of the license? The number displayed by the tsk info command is generated by the net size utility. Was netsize run on the host machine to expand the network?
3)x09Check out the sys.init.x file for that node. After downloading the OS, the system is "semi-alive" and needs to run its system initialization file to configure itself completely. It's possible that a command in the sys.init.x file is causing the crash. We recommend that you put the verbose command as the first line of this file. This will print out every command as it is executed and reveal where the hangup occurs.
Note that if the sys.init.x file for a node can't be found, then the default sys.init file is run. You should have just enough commands in this file to get any of the nodes up and running.
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