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Known restrictions of build 171-01

• Network booting is not currently supported.
• The total number of devices (both controllers and units, including disks) displayed by CHARON SRM console is limited to 48. Note that it does not affect the actual number of configured devices provided to CHARON guest OS.

• CHARON emulated console supports only 80 symbols in one line.

• In some specific situations the virtual disks descriptions can be displayed as "Virtual SCSI Disk (C)SRI" in SRM console. This problem does not affect CHARON functionality (ID#4729)
• Hardware partitioning is not supported by CHARON. However the same hardware layout can be emulated with multiple CHARON instances on the same host
• If CHARON is mapped to a physical CD-ROM it may be displayed as a "Virtual CD-ROM" in CHARON SRM console. It happens due to some restriction of the Linux CD-ROM interface ("dev/sr", "/dev/scd", "/dev/cdrom") - it does now allow to query actual peripheral identification (SCSI Vendor ID / SCSI Product ID). The workaround is:
  - Usage of the "media_type" parameter in configuration file. See the User's Guide for more information.
  - Usage of the SCSI Generic Interface ("/dev/sg<N>") rather than the CD-ROM ("dev/sr<N>", "/dev/scd<N>", "/dev/cdrom") interface. (ID#4564)
• PCI Passthrough KGPSA emulation may work incorrectly if physical FC PCI adapter shares PCI interrupt line with any other PCI module(s)
• Installation of Digital UNIX 4.0g fails on AS4100 when FC is configured (ID#3191)
• Physical tapes and generic SCSI devices currently do not work. The patch will be released as soon as the problem is fixed.
• CHARON-AXP does not emulate LSI 53C810 SCSI controller. CHARON-AXP emulates Qlogic KZPBA SCSI controller, which is the reason that the earliest supported VMS version is 6.2-1H3, and earliest supported Tru64 version is 3.2. If the driver for KZPBA is installed on an earlier version of VMS or Tru64 before system transfer to CHARON-AXP, it will function on CHARON-AXP (ID#2291)
• Non fatal "ERRFMT BUGCHECK" message may appear on boot from a backup disk created by CHARON-AXP. This message does not affect OpenVMS normal startup (ID#3123)
• By default the layout of the right part of the PC keyboard is not mapped to the layout of the VT100 keyboard. Use a special script created by Geoff Kingsmill (http://www.decuslib.com/decus/freewarev50/decxterm/decxterm). Run this script, then run CHARON-AXP normally. (ID#3030)
• Telnet sessions to CHARON-AXP console ports do not support ESC sequences of VT100 by default. To enable it open xterm, connect to CHARON-AXP and press "Ctrl-]" once connected. Then issue a command "mode char" to enable character mode. If it is also required to map righthand part of the keyboard correctly use the xterm started by the Geoff Kingsmill script (see above). (ID#3030)
• "CRC error" may occur while running the command "BACKUP/LIST/REW MKA100:..." on OpenVMS Alpha Version 8.4. This problem can also be observed on AXP hardware (ID#2925)
• Some delay may be experienced during OpenVMS 7.3-2 boot if product is running under FedoraCore (ID#3368)
• There is no DE500-BA device driver for OpenVMS 6.2-1H3. VMS patches are necessary in order to support the DE500-BA device with the emulator models AS1200/AS4000/AS4100 (ID#3091). The VMS 6.2-1H3 patches for these models are: 
  ALPBOOT12_062
  ALPLAN06_062
  ALPCLUSIO01_062
  ALPCPU1603_062 (is CPU specific for AS4100. Please check VMS patch documentation for relevant patches for other Alpha models)
• The DE500-BA device error count will be equal to 1 on OpenVMS 8.2/8.3. It has no negative effect on VMS boot and operations (ID#2963)
• Performance tests can cause VMS 6.2-1H3 to hang on an emulated AS400
• The CHARON console does not appear in WebUI if running on WinXP x64 (ID#3956)

• Network speed auto negotiation works with some restrictions (see the table below). It is always recommended to use full-duplex mode on the emulator host.

  Host settings	VMS (autodetect mode)	Tru64 (autodetect mode)
  1 Gbps full-duplex	100 Mbps full-duplex	100 Mbps full-duplex
  1 Gbps half-duplex	100 Mbps half-duplex	100 Mbps half-duplex
  100 Mbps full-duplex	100 Mbps full-duplex	100 Mbps full-duplex
  100 Mbps half-duplex	100 Mbps half-duplex	100 Mbps half-duplex
  10 Mbps full-duplex	10 Mbps full-duplex	10 Mbps full-duplex
  10 Mbps half duplex	10 Mbps half duplex	10 Mbps half-duplex

  
  

• The virtual Alpha firmware is designed to support a maximum of 48 devices. However for VMS and Tru64 all devices are available
• The firmware does not support the command recall using the up/down arrow keys.
• The VMS 7.x Monitor utility shows the maximum CPU quantity instead of actually configured quantity. It is a VMS 7.x restriction, and does not apply to VMS 8.x.
• Microsoft Windows for Alpha is not supported on CHARON-AXP
• Use of IDE is limited to ATAPI CDROM on the host machine. No iSCSI support is planned for IDE. UETP may produce error messages if IDE emulation is used.
• Emacs hangs if the OPA0 console is used. Emacs works fine over an SSH connection.
• Please note that CHARON-AXP has not been tested with SAN attached storage volumes over 2TB in size.

• Tru64 temperature monitoring should be disabled. It could cause Tru64 version 5.x shutdown with the message: "system fan has failed, system is shutting down now". If installing Tru64 from scratch, do not install envmon package.  If it is already installed, disable automatic startup by booting into SINGE USER mode and issue the following commands:

  # mount -u / # mount /usr # rcmgr set ENVMON_CONFIGURED 0

  then "exit" (Ctrl-D) to multi user mode.
  

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