boot(8) - NetBSD Manual Pages

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 9.1                       June 17, 2006                      NetBSD 9.1