boot(8) - NetBSD Manual Pages

BOOT(8)             NetBSD/sparc64 System Manager's Manual             BOOT(8)


NAME

     boot, ofwboot -- system bootstrapping procedures


SYNOPSIS

     boot [-adqsv] [-- <boot string>]


DESCRIPTION

     Sun UltraSPARC systems support booting from locally attached storage
     media (e.g. hard disk, CD-ROM), and booting over Ethernet networks using
     BOOTP.

   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 Open Firmware 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).

     -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.

     At any time you can halt the running system and get back to the Open
     Firmware.  If the console is the Sun framebuffer and keyboard, press the
     `STOP' and `A' keys at the same time on the keyboard.  On older models of
     Sun keyboards, the `STOP' key is labeled `L1'.

     If the console is a serial port the same is achieved by sending a
     `BREAK'.

     If you do this accidentally, you can continue whatever was in progress
     with the go command.


BOOT DEVICES

     Since machines vary greatly in the way their devices are connected, there
     are aliases defined by the firmware.  You can either use the fully quali-
     fied Open Firmware path of a device node, or the alias.

     The secondary boot loader, ofwboot, takes boot commands virtually the
     same as Open Firmware.  Thus, the following examples apply equally to
     ofwboot as well as Open Firmware.

     A typical list of usable boot devices (extracted from the output of the
     Open Firmware command devalias) is:

           net                      /sbus/SUNW,hme@e,8c00000
           disk                     /sbus/SUNW,fas@e,8800000/sd@0,0
           cdrom                    /sbus/SUNW,fas@e,8800000/sd@6,0:f
           disk6                    /sbus/SUNW,fas@e,8800000/sd@6,0
           disk5                    /sbus/SUNW,fas@e,8800000/sd@5,0
           disk4                    /sbus/SUNW,fas@e,8800000/sd@4,0
           disk3                    /sbus/SUNW,fas@e,8800000/sd@3,0
           disk2                    /sbus/SUNW,fas@e,8800000/sd@2,0
           disk1                    /sbus/SUNW,fas@e,8800000/sd@1,0
           disk0                    /sbus/SUNW,fas@e,8800000/sd@0,0

     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 par-
     tition involved.

     The boot device is an optional first part of the boot string, if no
     device is specified the default device is used (see below).


FIRMWARE ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

     All Open Firmware 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:

           boot-command          boot
           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.


FILES

     /netbsd                  system code
     /ofwboot                 system bootstrap
     /usr/mdec/ofwboot.net    alternate bootstrap when booting from the net-
                              work, see diskless(8) for details.


EXAMPLES

     Boot from CD-ROM:

           boot cdrom

     Note that some multi-architecture CDs are not able to use the default
     sparc64 partition for CD-ROMs (f), so they may require an explicit parti-
     tion letter, for example

           boot cdrom:c

     When using external SCSI CD-ROM drives it is important to know two
     things: the Sun firmware expects the SCSI ID to be six, and the drive
     must support 512-byte block reads, in addition to the standard 2048-byte
     reads.

     Use

           boot net -sd

     to boot single user from network and break into the kernel debugger as
     soon as possible.

     Use

           boot net tftp:netbsd -a

     to boot a kernel named netbsd obtained via tftp and have it ask for root
     file system, swap partition and init location once it is up.

     During installation from a different operating system

           boot disk:b

     is used to boot a ``miniroot'' file system from the swap partition.


SEE ALSO

     disklabel(8), diskless(8), fsck(8), halt(8), init(8), installboot(8),
     rc(8), shutdown(8), sparc/boot(8), syslogd(8)


STANDARDS

     Sun developed its firmware and promoted it to become IEEE Std 1275-1994
     (``Open Firmware'').

     IEEE 1275 Open Firmware:
           http://www.openfirmware.org/1275/


BUGS

     NetBSD provides no way to boot UltraSPARC systems from floppy disks.
     This is unlikely to change, due to very low demand for this feature.

     The OBP on Ultra 1 and Ultra 2 machines can only boot from the first 4Gb
     of the disk.

NetBSD 8.1                     November 9, 2008                     NetBSD 8.1