Sun Enterprise 250 Server Owner's Guide

How to Select the Boot Device

Before You Begin

Before you can select a boot device, you must complete the installation procedure; see:

"How to Install the Enterprise 250 Server"

Specifically, you must perform the following tasks:

Set up a system console; see "About Setting Up a Console"

Power on the system; see "How to Power On the System"

If you want to boot across a network interface, then you must also perform the following tasks:

Configure the Ethernet port; see "How to Configure the Standard Ethernet Interface"

Attach the Ethernet port to a network; see "How to Attach a Twisted-Pair Ethernet (TPE) Cable" or "How to Attach an MII Ethernet Transceiver"

The device that is used to boot the system is determined by the setting of an OpenBoot firmware configuration parameter called boot-device. The default setting of this parameter is disk net. Because of this setting, the firmware first attempts to boot from the system hard drive, and if that fails, then from the main logic board Ethernet interface.

This procedure assumes that you are familiar with the OpenBoot firmware and that you know how to enter the OpenBoot environment. For more information about the OpenBoot firmware, see OpenBoot 3.x Command Reference Manual in the Solaris System Administrator AnswerBook for your specific Solaris release.

What to Do

At the ok prompt, enter:
```
ok setenv boot-device 
device-specifier
```
where the device-specifier is one of the following:
- cdrom - Selects the CD-ROM drive
- disk - Selects the hard disk
- floppy - Selects the 3.5-inch diskette drive
- tape - Selects the SCSI tape drive
- net - Selects the Ethernet interface on the main logic board
- full path name - Selects the Ethernet interface specified by the path name
Note -
You can also specify the name of the program to be booted as well as the way the boot program operates. For more information, see OpenBoot 3.x Command Reference Manual in the Solaris System Administrator AnswerBook for your specific Solaris release.

If you want to select a network interface other than the system board Ethernet interface as the default boot device, you can determine the full path name of each interface, by entering:
```
ok show-devs
```
The show-devs command lists the system devices. It displays the full path name of each PCI device. An example of a path name is shown below:
```
/pci@1f,4000/pci@5/SUNW,hme@0,1
```

To reboot the system from the new boot device, enter:
```
ok reset
```
Note -
You can also power cycle the system using the front panel keyswitch.

What Next

For more information about using the OpenBoot firmware, see OpenBoot 3.x Command Reference Manual in the Solaris System Administrator AnswerBook for your specific Solaris release.