System administrators typically use the PROM level to boot a system. Occasionally, however, you might need to change the way the system boots. For example, you might want to reset the device to boot from or run hardware diagnostics before you bring the system to a multiuser level.
You need to change the default boot device to do the following:
Add a new drive to the system either permanently or temporarily
Change the network boot strategy
Temporarily boot a standalone system from the network
For a complete list of PROM commands, see monitor(1M) or eeprom(1M).
Display a system's PROM revision level with the banner command.
ok banner Sun Ultra 5/10 UPA/PCI (UltraSPARC-IIi 333MHz), No Keyboard OpenBoot 3.15, 128 MB memory installed, Serial #number. Ethernet address number, Host ID: number. |
Hardware configuration information, including the revision number of the PROM, is displayed. In this example, the PROM revision number is 3.15.
You might need to identify the devices on the system to figure out what are the appropriate devices to boot from.
Before you can safely use the probe commands to find out what devices are attached to the system, you need to do the following:
Change the PROM auto-boot? parameter to false and
Issue the reset-all command to clear system registers
You can the probe commands that are available on your system by using the sifting probe command, as follows:
ok sifting probe |
If you run the probe commands without clearing the system registers, the following message is displayed:
ok probe-scsi This command may hang the system if a Stop-A or halt command has been executed. Please type reset-all to reset the system before executing this command. Do you wish to continue? (y/n) n |
Change the PROM auto-boot? parameter to false.
ok setenv auto-boot? false |
Clear the system's registers.
ok reset-all |
Identify the devices on the system.
ok probe-device |
(Optional) If you want the system to reboot after a power failure or after using the reset command, then change the auto-boot? parameter back to true.
ok setenv auto-boot? true auto-boot? = true |
Boot the system back to multiuser mode.
ok reset |
The following example shows how to identify the devices connected to an Ultra10 system.
ok setenv auto-boot? false auto-boot? = false ok reset-all Resetting ... Sun Ultra 5/10 UPA/PCI (UltraSPARC-IIi 333MHz), No Keyboard OpenBoot 3.15, 128 MB memory installed, Serial #10933339. Ethernet address 8:0:20:a6:d4:5b, Host ID: 80a6d45b. ok probe-ide Device 0 ( Primary Master ) ATA Model: ST34321A Device 1 ( Primary Slave ) Not Present Device 2 ( Secondary Master ) Removable ATAPI Model: CRD-8322B Device 3 ( Secondary Slave ) Not Present ok setenv auto-boot? true auto-boot? = true |
You can use the devalias command to identify the device aliases and the associated paths of devices that might be connected to the system.
ok devalias screen /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/SUNW,m64B@2 net /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/network@1,1 cdrom /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/cdrom@2,0:f disk /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/disk@0,0 disk3 /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/disk@3,0 disk2 /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/disk@2,0 disk1 /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/disk@1,0 disk0 /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/disk@0,0 ide /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3 floppy /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ebus@1/fdthree ttyb /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ebus@1/se:b ttya /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ebus@1/se:a keyboard! /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ebus@1/su@14,3083f8:forcemode keyboard /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ebus@1/su@14,3083f8 mouse /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ebus@1/su@14,3062f8 name aliases |
You might need to identify the devices on the system before you can change the default boot device to some other device. For information on identifying devices on the system, see SPARC: How to Identify Devices on a System.
Become superuser.
Change to run level 0.
# init 0 |
The ok PROM prompt is displayed.
For more information, see init(1M).
Change the value of the boot-device parameter.
ok setenv boot-device device[n] |
boot-device |
Identifies the parameter for setting the device from which to boot. |
device[n] |
Identifies the boot-device value such as a disk or the network. The n can be specified as the disk number. |
Use one of the probe commands if you need help with identifying the disk number.
Verify that the default boot device is changed.
ok printenv boot-device |
Save the new boot-device value.
ok reset |
The new boot-device value is written to the PROM.
In this example, the default boot device is set to disk.
# init 0 # INIT: New run level: 0 . . . The system is down. syncing file systems... done Program terminated ok setenv boot-device disk boot-device = disk ok printenv boot-device boot-device disk disk ok reset Sun Ultra 5/10 UPA/PCI (UltraSPARC-IIi 333MHz), No Keyboard OpenBoot 3.15, 128 MB memory installed, Serial #number. Ethernet address number, Host ID: number. Boot device: disk File and args: SunOS Release 5.9 Version 64-bit . . . pluto console login: |
In this example, the default boot device is set to the network.
# init 0 # INIT: New run level: 0 . . . The system is down. syncing file systems... done Program terminated ok setenv boot-device net boot-device = net ok printenv boot-device boot-device net disk ok reset Sun Ultra 5/10 UPA/PCI (UltraSPARC-IIi 333MHz), No Keyboard OpenBoot 3.15, 128 MB memory installed, Serial #number. Ethernet address number, Host ID: number. Boot device: net File and args: . . . pluto console login: |
Run the reset command from the ok prompt.
ok reset |
This self-test program, which runs diagnostic tests on the hardware, is executed and the system is rebooted.