NAME
boot —
hppa system bootstrapping
procedures
DESCRIPTION
System starts
When powered on, after a panic, or if the system is rebooted via
reboot(8) or
shutdown(8), the hppa
firmware (“PDC”) will proceed to its initialization, and will boot
an operating system if autoboot is enabled.
Boot process description
System boot blocks are provided as a “LIF” (Logical Interchange
Format) archive, either on a disk device, or via the network, using the
bootp or
rboot protocols, depending on the
PDC version.
PDC concepts
If autoboot is enabled, the PDC will attempt to boot from the specified
“boot path” value. If no “boot path” has been
specified, the PDC will then scan for bootable devices and boot from the first
found, after a few seconds allowing the user to interrupt the boot process. If
autoboot is disabled, the PDC will enter interactive mode, after an optional
device scan. In all cases, it is possible to enter interactive mode by holding
the escape key during the selftests, or when prompted to do so to abort the
current operation, unless the PDC has been configured in “secure
mode”.
ISL interaction
“ISL” stands for “Initial System Loader” and is the
boot program in
NetBSD. On all
versions of the PDC except for the 712 and 725 models the “boot”
command (see below) will be followed by the question: “Interact with IPL
(Y, N, or Cancel)?>” where a positive answer will invoke an
interactive prompt in the
boot program later and negative
will thus suppress it. A cancellation will abort the boot process.
On the 712 and 725 models firmware an additional “isl” argument
should be given to the “boot” command to invoke the
boot interactive prompt. The default behaviour is a
non-interactive boot process.
Old PDC operation
This version is used on the following models: 705, 7x0, 715/33/50/75, 725/50/75,
735, 755. There are two levels of interactive commands in this version. The
first level is a short menu:
b) Boot from specified device
s) Search for bootable device
a) Enter Boot Administration mode
x) Exit and continue boot sequence
Select from menu:
which provides the following commands:
- b
- boot from a device found during the scan, either with its
short “P#” form, or a complete name specification. For
example, to boot from the SCSI disk with id 6 off the built-in (first)
controller, one would enter b
scsi.6.0.
- s
- rescan for bootable devices.
- a
- enter the second part of interactive mode.
- x
- resume an interrupted boot sequence.
The “Boot Administration” mode, recognizable with its
BOOT_ADMIN> prompt, controls the various boot options.
The complete list of commands depends on the machine and PDC version. The
following list only mentions commands impacting the boot process.
-
-
- AUTOSELECT
- Displays or changes the autoboot setting. If autoselect is
set to “on”, the PDC will always attempt to boot the first
bootable device found in this order:
- Boot device
path setting.
- SCSI devices connected to
the built-in SCSI controller, the highest ID numbers being
preferred.
- Network
rboot server (see also
rbootd(8)).
- Other SCSI devices
connected to secondary controllers, the highest ID numbers being
preferred.
If the primary path setting defines a bootable device, no
device scan will occur.
-
-
- BOOT
- Boots off the specified device. It is similar to the
b command from the short menu above. The
“primary” and “alternate” path settings may be
booted with boot pri and
boot alt respectively.
-
-
- PATH
- Displays or changes the boot and console devices. The boot
device is defined as the “primary” path, and another setting
may be stored as the “alternate” path for rescue purposes. For
example, to define the primary boot path to the SCSI disk with ID 5
connected to the built-in controller, one would enter path
primary scsi.5
When invoked without parameters, path will list the
various path settings.
Modern PDC operation
Machines equipped with 7100LC, 7200, or 7300LC CPU types are usually blessed
with a different kind of PDC. There is only one interactive mode, with a
BOOT_ADMIN> prompt, which provides both boot settings and
commands. The complete list of commands depends on the machine and PDC
version. The following list only mentions commands impacting the boot process.
-
-
- auto
boot
- Displays or changes the autoboot setting. If
auto boot is set to “on”, the PDC will
always attempt to boot. The booted device chosen will depend on the
auto search setting.
-
-
- auto
search
- Displays or changes the device scan setting. If
auto search is set to “on”, the PDC will
attempt to boot the first bootable device found in this order:
- Boot device
path setting.
- SCSI devices connected to
the built-in SCSI controller, the highest ID numbers being
preferred.
- Network
bootp server (see also
dhcpd(8)).
- Other SCSI devices
connected to secondary controllers, the highest ID numbers being
preferred.
If auto search is set to “off” and the primary
boot path points to a bootable device, no device scan will occur.
Note that setting auto search to “on” will
force autoboot, regardless of the auto boot value.
-
-
- boot
- Boots off the specified device. The “primary”
and “alternate” path settings may be booted with
boot pri and
boot alt respectively.
-
-
- path
- Displays or changes the boot and console devices. The boot
device is defined as the “primary” path, and another setting
may be stored as the “alternate” path for rescue purposes. For
example, to define the primary boot path to the SCSI disk with ID 5
connected to the built-in controller, one would enter path
pri scsi.5.
When invoked without parameters, path will list the
various path settings.
Abnormal system termination
If the system crashes, it will enter the kernel debugger,
ddb(4), if it is configured in
the kernel. If the crash occurred during initialization and the debugger is
not present or is exited, the kernel will halt the system. If the crash
occurred during normal operation and the debugger is not present or is exited,
the system will attempt a dump to the configured dump device (which will be
automatically recovered with
savecore(8) during the next
multi-user boot cycle), and after the dump is complete (successful or not) the
kernel will attempt a reboot.
FILES
- boot.lif
- network bootstrap and kernel combined image
- /netbsd
- default NetBSD system kernel
- /usr/mdec/xxboot
- primary bootstrap for “ffs” file system
- /usr/mdec/boot
- system bootstrap (usually also installed as
/boot)
SEE ALSO
ddb(4),
dhcpd(8),
halt(8),
init(8),
installboot(8),
rbootd(8),
reboot(8),
savecore(8),
shutdown(8)