The following table provides a list of system administration tasks and the corresponding boot type that is used to complete the task.
Table 10–2 Booting a System
Reason for System Reboot |
Appropriate Boot Type |
Information for SPARC Procedure |
Information for x86 Procedure |
---|---|---|---|
To turn off system power due to anticipated power outage |
Turn system power back on | ||
To change kernel parameters in the /etc/system file |
Reboot the system to run level 3 (multiuser level with NFS resources shared) |
SPARC: How to Boot a System to Run Level 3 (Multiuser Level) | |
To perform file system maintenance, such as performing a backup or restoring system data |
Use Control-D from run level S to bring the system back to run level 3 |
SPARC: How to Boot a System to Run Level S (Single-User Level) |
x86: How to Boot a System to Run Level S (Single-User Level) |
To repair a system configuration file such as /etc/system |
Interactive boot | ||
To add or remove hardware from the system |
Reconfiguration boot (also to turn on system power after adding or removing hardware) | ||
To boot the kernel debugger (kadb) to track down a system problem |
Booting kabd |
SPARC: How to Boot the System With the Kernel Debugger (kadb) | |
To repair an important system file that is causing system boot failure |
Recovery boot | ||
To recover from a hung system and you want to force a crash dump |
Recovery boot |
See example on SPARC: How to Force a Crash Dump and Reboot the System |
See example on x86: How to Force a Crash Dump and Reboot the System |
For examples of booting a system, see Chapter 13, SPARC: Booting a System (Tasks) or Chapter 14, x86: Booting a System (Tasks).