boot(8)
- NetBSD Manual Pages
BOOT(8) NetBSD/x68k 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. An
automatic consistency check of the file systems will be performed, and
unless this fails, the system will resume multi-user operations.
Cold starts
The X68000/X68030 system boots from the device which is determined by the
configuration of battery-backuped SRAM. By default, the boot ROM
attempts to boot from floppy disk drives (from 0 to 3) first, and then
attempts to boot from hard disk (SASI or SCSI). On the NetBSD/x68k,
booting from SCSI disks (sd??) and 2HD floppy disks (fd?a, fd?c) is cur-
rently supported.
Bootstrapping from a floppy
When the floppy disk is selected as the boot device, the initial program
loader of the IOCS (firmware) reads the fdboot_ufs program at the top of
the disk, and then the fdboot_ufs program loads the /boot program from
the FFS or LFS file system. Normally, the /boot program then loads the
NetBSD kernel /netbsd from the same floppy. In addition, the /boot pro-
gram has abilities to uncompress gzip'ed kernels, to read the kernel from
other disks of other file systems etc (see below).
For floppy disks, fdboot_ustar is also provided to read large kernels
which do not fit one a single floppy.
Bootstrapping from a SCSI hard disk
When a SCSI hard disk is selected as the boot device, the initial program
loader on the SCSI host adapter's ROM reads the operating system-indepen-
dent IPL menu program at the top of the disk. The IPL menu program rec-
ognizes the partition table, and selects the partition to read the oper-
ating system kernel. During this phase, when the HELP key on the key-
board is pressed, the IPL menu program displays the partition menu of
that disk to prompt the user to select the boot partition (although the
NetBSD implementation of the IPL menu, /usr/mdec/mboot, does not have
this functionality).
Next, the IPL menu reads the OS-dependent boot program from the top of
the selected partition. For NetBSD FFS/LFS file systems sdboot_ufs is
used. The sdboot_ufs program then loads the /boot program from that par-
tition.
Normal Operation
Once running, a banner similar to the following will appear:
NetBSD Multi-boot, Revision 1.1
(user@buildhost, builddate)
Press return to boot now, any other key for boot menu
booting sd0a:netbsd - starting in 5
After a countdown, the system image listed will be loaded. (In the exam-
ple above, it will be ``sd0a:netbsd'' which is the file netbsd on parti-
tion ``a'' of the NetBSD SCSI hard disk of ID 0. Pressing a key within
the time limit will enter interactive mode.
Interactive mode
In interactive mode, the boot loader will present a prompt, allowing
input of these commands:
boot [device:][filename] [-adqsv]
The default device will be set to the disk that the boot
loader was loaded from. To boot from an alternate disk, the
full name of the device should be given at the prompt.
device is of the form xd[N[x]] where xd is the device from
which to boot, N is the unit number, and x is the partition
letter.
The following list of supported devices may vary from
installation to installation:
sd SCSI disks on a controller recognized by the IOCS.
The unit number is the SCSI ID.
fd Floppy drives as numbered by the IOCS.
The default filename is netbsd; if the boot loader fails to
successfully open that image, it then tries netbsd.gz
(expected to be a kernel image compressed by gzip(1)).
Alternate system images can be loaded by just specifying the
name of the image.
Options are:
-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 ddb(4).
-q Boot the system in quiet mode.
-s Bring the system up in single-user mode.
-v Boot the system in verbose mode.
help Print an overview about commands and arguments.
ls [path]
Print a directory listing of path, containing inode number,
filename and file type. path can contain a device specifi-
cation.
halt Reboot the system.
Model-specific notes
Note for X68030+MC68030 systems: Nothing special to be attended to; you
can boot NetBSD just like as other operating systems such as Human68k and
OS-9.
Note for X68030/040turbo(68040 accelerator by BEEPs) systems: NetBSD can
boot under 040 mode. It can also boot under 030 mode if you have MC68030
on the board.
Note for X68000/Xellent30(68030 accelerator by TSR)+MC68030 systems: In
order to boot NetBSD, you must choose 030 mode by using CH30.SYS, which
must reside in the battery-backuped SRAM.
Note for X68000/Jupiter-X(68040/060 accelerator by FTZ-net) systems: The
system must be in 040/060 processor mode.
FILES
/netbsd system code
/netbsd.gz gzip-compressed system code
/usr/mdec/xxboot_ufs boot block (read by installboot), xx is disktype
/usr/mdec/boot source of /boot (can be just copied to the root
directory)
/boot main part of the boot program
SEE ALSO
reboot(2), disklabel(8), halt(8), reboot(8), shutdown(8)
NetBSD 9.0 August 16, 2014 NetBSD 9.0
Powered by man-cgi (2024-03-20).
Maintained for NetBSD
by Kimmo Suominen.
Based on man-cgi by Panagiotis Christias.