05-02-2012 05:57 PM
Hey Guys,
I stumbled upon the following issue while re-imaging to 2.0.2.
The appliance had the external extension shelf connected and 2xFC cables connected to FC ports in slot 3 (tape-out). During the re-image process, just after the operating system is installed and the appliance rebooted, the last step of the booting process is initiation of the pdos_postinstall. This script mounts the USB drive, copies NetBackup packages from USB drive to the local disk and initiates the install. Unfortunatelly if the shelf is connected, the script can't find the proper drive, as the order of the scsi devices is altered (changed). As the result the pdos_postinstall fails and you are getting the info:
*Welcome to NetBackup Appliance 2.0.2*
ERROR: Unable to mount USB
nb-appliance login:
When you try to log in as the admin, authentication fails.
BTW - for your info - you can still log in, but use root and default password from 1.2 :)
To overcome that issue, do the following:
Disconnect the extension shelf, disconnect the FC (just in case) and reboot the appliance. This time it should find the USB drive and the pdos_postinstall will do the rest.
One more thing - for some reasons after the reimage the order of the devices is changed, so you need to poke around in BIOS to point it to:
ICHx/ESB2 Embedded
Symantec will be posting the technote soon.
Hope it helps.
05-04-2012 03:42 AM
Hi Sebastian,
Had the exact same problem.
Symantec are releasing the fix on 2.0.3
Matt
05-07-2012 03:52 PM
http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH181689
05-08-2012 09:01 PM
Another note on reimaging that may hopefully help folks avoid some pain; make sure you disconnect ethernet cables when you reimage, PARTICULARLY on networks with either auto registering DHCP or DHCP with DNS. I've seen strange things happen to the appliances that are not immediately visible, particularly around the authentication processes. If the appliance can get and resolve a name during the reimage process it will configure it's internal authentication with that name instead of the default nb-appliance and is most obviously identified by a message at the login screen saying that the services are restarting and to try again in 5 minutes. If you get on with support, have them walk you through to check the security.conf file and you'll probably find that the internal appliance naming is wrong.
-Chad
05-10-2012 08:16 AM
Hi, I noticed that the issue was caused by using a usb key to reimage the appliance. If you have a DVD, you can probably avoid this issue (however not tested because I have a single box). Some times ago I posted a video here to show steps:
http://www.symantec.com/connect/videos/netbackup-5200-series-v20-software-reinstallation
reimage was made here with a 2.00 media... I'm not sure a 2.0.3 exist (a good idea would be to be able to download one with last version from fileconnect!)
regards
05-10-2012 08:41 PM
Make sure that you're not changing the BIOS to prefer to boot from USB also. As the box is booting it displays a message that you can hit F6 to choose the boot device. This is preferred so that you don't change teh appliance to always try and boot from the USB stick. Once the first step of booting from the USB stick is accomplished, from then on you want to be booting from the internal RAID. If the BIOS is changed to boot from USB and the USB stick is inserted after a reboot you will get a strange error message along the lines of "unknown filesystem, need to load the kernel first" (but that's out of memory so it may be a bit different).
05-10-2012 11:27 PM
Hi, also thanks pointing out the F6 possibility during boot.
Regards