boot(8)
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BOOT(8) NetBSD/sparc System Manager's Manual BOOT(8)
NAME
boot -- system bootstrapping procedures
SYNOPSIS
boot [-adqsv] [-- <boot string>]
DESCRIPTION
Power fail and crash recovery
Normally, the system will reboot itself at power-up or after crashes. An
automatic consistency check of the file systems will be performed as
described in fsck(8), and unless this fails, the system will resume
multi-user operations.
Cold starts
The Sun boot firmware, either old-style or new-style (Open Boot Prom),
performs a Power On Self Test (POST), and then will boot an operating
system according to configuration in Open Firmware environment variables.
Boot program options
-a Prompt for the root file system device, the system crash dump
device, and the path to init(8).
-d Bring the system up in debug mode. Here it waits for a kernel
debugger connect; see gdb(1).
-C Boot kernel in compat mode. Starting with revision 1.14 (introduced
on 2003/03/01), the sparc boot program loads the NetBSD kernel at
its linked virtual address. This feature requires a kernel built
after 2003/02/21 (corresponding to kernel version 1.6Q). To load
older kernels, the -C option must be used, which loads the kernel at
physical address 0x4000. The size of a kernel loaded in this way is
limited to approximately 3MB.
-q Boot the system in quiet mode.
-s Bring the system up in single-user mode.
-v Boot the system in verbose mode.
Any extra flags or arguments, or the <boot string> after the -- separator
are passed to the boot PROM. Other flags are currently ignored.
The SPARC boot ROM comes in two flavours: an ``old-style'' ROM is used in
sun4 machines, while a ``new-style'' ROM can be found on sun4c and sun4m
models. The ``new-style'' SPARC boot ROM is a full-featured Forth system
with emacs key bindings. It can be put in ``old-style'' user-interface
compatibility mode (in which case it shows a simple `>' prompt), but this
is essentially useless. However, by default on sun4c models, the ROM
runs in old-mode; to enter new-mode type `n'. The ROM then shows a
Forth-style ``ok'' prompt. It is recommended to have the ROM always
start in its native ``new-style'' mode. Utter the following incantation
in new-mode to force the ROM to always start in new-mode.
ok setenv sunmon-compat? false
The ROM will normally load the kernel from ``sd(0,0,0)vmunix''. To
change the default so that NetBSD will be loaded from somewhere else,
type the following
ok setenv boot-from sd(0,0,0)netbsd
On newer SPARC machines, there are various aliases to access common
devices. A typical list of usable boot devices (extracted from the out-
put of the Open Boot PROM command devalias) is:
floppy /obio/SUNW,fdtwo
net-aui /iommu/sbus/ledma@f,400010:aui/le@f,c00000
net-tpe /iommu/sbus/ledma@f,400010:tpe/le@f,c00000
net /iommu/sbus/ledma@f,400010/le@f,c00000
disk /iommu/sbus/espdma@f,400000/esp@f,800000/sd@3,0
cdrom /iommu/sbus/espdma@f,400000/esp@f,800000/sd@6,0:d
tape /iommu/sbus/espdma@f,400000/esp@f,800000/st@4,0
tape1 /iommu/sbus/espdma@f,400000/esp@f,800000/st@5,0
tape0 /iommu/sbus/espdma@f,400000/esp@f,800000/st@4,0
disk3 /iommu/sbus/espdma@f,400000/esp@f,800000/sd@3,0
disk2 /iommu/sbus/espdma@f,400000/esp@f,800000/sd@2,0
disk1 /iommu/sbus/espdma@f,400000/esp@f,800000/sd@1,0
disk0 /iommu/sbus/espdma@f,400000/esp@f,800000/sd@0,0
For new-style machines, if a device specification includes a partition
letter (for example cdrom in above list), that partition is used by
default, otherwise the first (a) partition is used. If booting from the
net device, there is no partition involved.
At any time you can break back to the ROM by pressing the `L1' and `a'
keys at the same time (if the console is a serial port the same is
achieved by sending a `break'). If you do this accidentally you can con-
tinue whatever was in progress by typing `go'.
OPEN BOOT PROM ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
This section only applies to new-style machines.
All Open Boot PROM environment variables can be printed with the printenv
command and changed with the setenv command. The boot process relevant
variables and their suggested value for booting NetBSD are:
auto-boot? true
boot-file
boot-device disk
diag-switch? false
Of course you may select any other boot device, if you do not want to
boot from the device aliased to disk, see the discussion on devices
above.
OPEN BOOT PROM ABBREVIATED COMMAND SUMMARY
This section only applies to new-style machines.
The following Open Boot PROM commands are related to the boot process:
boot boot the system from the default device
boot device filename arguments
boot the specified device, filename and arguments
probe-ide list devices on the primary IDE controller
probe-ide-all list devices on all known IDE controllers
probe-scsi list devices on the primary SCSI controller
probe-scsi-all list devices on all known SCSI controllers
reset reset the system
For disk and tape devices, the boot device is specified as
`/path/device@target,lun:partition'.
PROM MONITOR ABBREVIATED COMMAND SUMMARY
This section only applies to old-style machines.
The following PROM monitor commands are related to the boot process:
b boot the system from the default device
b device filename arguments
boot the specified device, filename and arguments
b? list boot device types
k2 reset the system
For SCSI disk and tape devices, the boot device is specified as
`device(controller,unit,partition)', where `unit' is the hexidecimal
value of the SCSI id of the target multiplied by eight plus the lun, and
`partition' is the partition number, starting from 0.
FILES
/netbsd system code
/boot system bootstrap
SEE ALSO
crash(8), disklabel(8), fsck(8), halt(8), init(8), installboot(8), rc(8),
shutdown(8), sparc64/boot(8), syslogd(8)
BUGS
On sun4 machines, the NetBSD sparc boot loader can only boot from RAID
partitions that start at the beginning of the disk.
On sun4 and early PROM version sun4c machines, the PROM can only boot
from the first 1Gb of the disk.
On later PROM version sun4c and early PROM version sun4m machines, the
PROM can only boot from the first 2Gb of the disk.
On later PROM version sun4m machines, the PROM can only boot from the
first 4Gb of the disk.
NetBSD 6.1.3 June 17, 2006 NetBSD 6.1.3
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