boot(8)
- NetBSD Manual Pages
BOOT(8) NetBSD/vax System Manager's Manual BOOT(8)
NAME
boot -- system bootstrapping procedures
DESCRIPTION
Power fail and crash recovery
Normally, the system will reboot itself at power-up or after crashes.
Provided the auto-restart is enabled on the machine front panel, an auto-
matic consistency check of the file systems will be performed, and unless
this fails, the system will resume multi-user operations.
Cold starts
These are processor-type dependent. On an 11/780, there are two floppy
files for each disk controller, both of which cause boots from unit 0 of
the root file system of a controller located on mba0 or uba0. One gives
a single user shell, while the other invokes the multi-user automatic
reboot. Thus these files are HPS and HPM for the single and multi-user
boot from MASSBUS RP06/RM03/RM05 disks, UPS and UPM for UNIBUS storage
module controller and disks such as the EMULEX SC-21 and AMPEX 9300 pair,
RAS and RAM to boot from MSCP controllers and disks such as the RA81, or
HKS and HKM for RK07 disks. There is also a script for booting from the
default device, which is normally a copy of one of the standard multi-
user boot scripts, but which may be modified to perform other actions or
to boot from a different unit. The situation on the 8600 is similar,
with scripts loaded from the console RL02.
Giving the command
>>>BOOT HPM
would boot the system from (e.g.) an RP06 and run the automatic consis-
tency check as described in fsck(8). (Note that it may be necessary to
type control-P and halt the processor to gain the attention of the LSI-11
before getting the >>> prompt.) The command
>>>BOOT ANY
invokes a version of the boot program in a way which allows you to spec-
ify any system as the system to be booted. It reads from the console a
device specification (see below) followed immediately by a pathname.
The scripts may be modified for local configuration if necessary. The
flags are placed in register 11 (as defined in <sys/reboot.h>). The boot
device is specified in register 10. The encoding of this register is
also defined in <sys/reboot.h>. The current encoding has a historical
basis, and is shown in the following table:
bits usage
0-7 boot device type (the device major number)
8-15 disk partition
16-19 drive unit
20-23 controller number
24-27 adaptor number (UNIBUS or MASSBUS as appropriate)
The adaptor number corresponds to the normal configuration on the 11/750,
and to the order in which adaptors are found on the 11/780 and 8600 (gen-
erally the same as the numbers used by UNIX).
On an 11/750, the reset button will boot from the device selected by the
front panel boot device switch. In systems with RK07's, position B nor-
mally selects the RK07 for boot. This will boot multi-user. To boot
from RK07 with boot flags you may specify
>>>B/-n DMA0
where, giving a n of 1 causes the boot program to ask for the name of the
system to be bootstrapped, giving a n of 2 causes the boot program to
come up single user, and a n of 3 causes both of these actions to occur.
The ``DM'' specifies RK07, the ``A'' represents the adaptor number
(UNIBUS or MASSBUS), and the ``0'' is the drive unit number. Other disk
types which may be used are DB (MASSBUS), DD (TU58), and DU (UDA-50/RA
disk). A non-zero disk partition can be used by adding (partition times
1000 hex) to n.
The boot procedure on the Micro VAX II is similar. A switch on the back
panel sets the power-up action to autoboot or to halt. When halted, the
processor may be booted using the same syntax as on the 11/750.
The 11/750 boot procedure uses the boot ROMs to load block 0 off of the
specified device. The /usr/mdec directory contains a number of bootstrap
programs for the various disks which should be placed in a new pack by
disklabel(8). Similarly, the Micro VAX II boot procedure loads a boot
parameter block from block 0 of the disk. The rdboot ``bootstrap'' con-
tains the correct parameters for an MSCP disk such as the RD53.
On any processor, the boot program finds the corresponding file on the
given device (netbsd by default), loads that file into memory location
zero, and starts the program at the entry address specified in the pro-
gram header (after clearing off the high bit of the specified entry
address).
The file specifications used with ``BOOT ANY'' or ``B/3'' are of the
form:
device(adaptor,controller,unit,minor)
where device is the type of the device to be searched, adaptor is the
UNIBUS or MASSBUS number of the adaptor to which the device is attached,
controller is the unit number of the controller or MASSBUS tape formatter
on that adaptor, unit is the unit number of the disk or transport slave
unit of the tape, and minor is the disk partition or tape file number.
Leading adaptor or controller numbers default to 0. Normal line editing
characters can be used when typing the file specification. The following
list of supported devices may vary from installation to installation:
hp MASSBUS disk drive
up UNIBUS storage module drive
ht TE16,TU45,TU77 on MASSBUS
kra storage module on a KDB50
mt TU78 on MASSBUS
hk RK07 on UNIBUS
ra storage module on a MSCP-compatible UNIBUS controller
rb storage module on a 730 IDC
rl RL02 on UNIBUS
tm TM11 emulation tape drives on UNIBUS
tms TMSCP-compatible tape
ts TS11 on UNIBUS
ut UNIBUS TU45 emulator
For example, to boot from a file system which starts at cylinder 0 of
unit 0 of a MASSBUS disk, type `hp(0,0)netbsd' to the boot prompt;
`hp(2,0,1,0)netbsd' would specify drive 1 on MASSBUS adaptor 2;
`up(0,0)netbsd' would specify a UNIBUS drive, `hk(0,0)netbsd' would spec-
ify an RK07 disk drive, `ra(1,0,0,0)netbsd' would specify a UDA50 disk
drive on a second UNIBUS, and `rb(0,0)netbsd' would specify a disk on a
730 IDC. For tapes, the minor device number gives a file offset;
`mt(1,2,3,4)' would specify the fifth file on slave 3 of the formatter at
`drive' 2 on mba 1.
On an 11/750 with patchable control store, microcode patches will be
installed by boot if the file pcs750.bin exists in the root of the
filesystem from which the system is booted.
In an emergency, the bootstrap methods described in the paper Installing
and Operating 4.3bsd can be used to boot from a distribution tape.
FILES
/netbsd system code
/boot system bootstrap
/usr/mdec/xxboot sector 0-15 boot block
/pcs750.bin microcode patch file on 750
SEE ALSO
arff(8), halt(8), reboot(8), shutdown(8)
HISTORY
The boot command appeared in 4.0BSD.
NetBSD 9.0 April 19, 1994 NetBSD 9.0
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