| BOOT(1M) | Maintenance Commands | BOOT(1M) |
If the standalone is identified as a dynamically-linked executable, boot will load the interpreter (linker/loader) as indicated by the executable format and then transfer control to the interpreter. If the standalone is statically-linked, it will jump directly to the standalone.
Once the kernel is loaded, it starts the UNIX system, mounts the necessary file systems (see vfstab(4)), and runs /sbin/init to bring the system to the "initdefault" state specified in /etc/inittab. See inittab(4).
After the machine is turned on, the system firmware (in PROM) executes power-on self-test (POST). The form and scope of these tests depends on the version of the firmware in your system.
After the tests have been completed successfully, the firmware attempts to autoboot if the appropriate flag has been set in the non-volatile storage area used by the firmware. The name of the file to load, and the device to load it from can also be manipulated.
These flags and names can be set using the eeprom(1M) command from the shell, or by using PROM commands from the ok prompt after the system has been halted.
The second level program is either a fileystem-specific boot block (when booting from a disk), or inetboot or wanboot (when booting across the network).
Network Booting
Network booting occurs in two steps: the client first obtains an IP address and any other parameters necessary to permit it to load the second-stage booter. The second-stage booter in turn loads the boot archive from the boot device.
An IP address can be obtained in one of three ways: RARP, DHCP, or manual configuration, depending on the functions available in and configuration of the PROM. Machines of the sun4u and sun4v kernel architectures have DHCP-capable PROMs.
The boot command syntax for specifying the two methods of network booting are:
The command:
without a rarp or dhcp specifier, invokes the default method for network booting over the network interface for which net is an alias.
The sequence of events for network booting using RARP/bootparams is described in the following paragraphs. The sequence for DHCP follows the RARP/ bootparams description.
When booting over the network using RARP/bootparams, the PROM begins by broadcasting a reverse ARP request until it receives a reply. When a reply is received, the PROM then broadcasts a TFTP request to fetch the first block of inetboot. Subsequent requests will be sent to the server that initially answered the first block request. After loading, inetboot will also use reverse ARP to fetch its IP address, then broadcast bootparams RPC calls (see bootparams(4)) to locate configuration information and its root file system. inetboot then loads the boot archive by means of NFS and transfers control to that archive.
When booting over the network using DHCP, the PROM broadcasts the hardware address and kernel architecture and requests an IP address, boot parameters, and network configuration information. After a DHCP server responds and is selected (from among potentially multiple servers), that server sends to the client an IP address and all other information needed to boot the client. After receipt of this information, the client PROM examines the name of the file to be loaded, and will behave in one of two ways, depending on whether the file's name appears to be an HTTP URL. If it does not, the PROM downloads inetboot, loads that file into memory, and executes it. inetboot loads the boot archive, which takes over the machine and releases inetboot. Startup scripts then initiate the DHCP agent (see dhcpagent(1M)), which implements further DHCP activities.
If the file to be loaded is an HTTP URL, the PROM will use HTTP to load the referenced file. If the client has been configured with an HMAC SHA-1 key, it will check the integrity of the loaded file before proceeding to execute it. The file is expected to be the wanboot binary. The WAN boot process can be configured to use either DHCP or NVRAM properties to discover the install server and router and the proxies needed to connect to it. When wanboot begins executing, it determines whether sufficient information is available to it to allow it to proceed. If any necessary information is missing, it will either exit with an appropriate error or bring up a command interpreter and prompt for further configuration information. Once wanboot has obtained the necessary information, it loads the boot loader into memory by means of HTTP. If an encryption key has been installed on the client, wanboot will verify the boot loader's signature and its accompanying hash. Presence of an encryption key but no hashing key is an error.
The wanboot boot loader can communicate with the client using either HTTP or secure HTTP. If the former, and if the client has been configured with an HMAC SHA-1 key, the boot loader will perform an integrity check of the root file system. Once the root file system has been loaded into memory (and possibly had an integrity check performed), the boot archive is transferred from the server. If provided with a boot_logger URL by means of the wanboot.conf(4) file, wanboot will periodically log its progress.
Not all PROMs are capable of consuming URLs. You can determine whether a client is so capable using the list-security-keys OBP command (see monitor(1M)).
WAN booting is not currently available on the x86 platform.
The wanboot Command Line
When the client program is wanboot, it accepts client-program-args of the form:
where each option may be an action:
...or an assignment, using the interpreter's parameter names listed below.
The wanboot Command Interpreter
The wanboot command interpreter is invoked by supplying a client-program-args of "-o prompt" when booting. Input consists of single commands or assignments, or a comma-separated list of commands or assignments. The configuration parameters are:
The key names are:
Finally, the URL or the WAN boot CGI is referred to by means of:
The interpreter accepts the following commands:
Any of these assignments or commands can be passed on the command line as part of the -o options, subject to the OBP limit of 128 bytes for boot arguments. For example, -o list,go would simply list current (default) values of the parameters and then continue booting.
Firmware implementing iBFT presents an iSCSI disk in the BIOS during startup as a bootable device by establishing the connection to the iSCSI target. The rest of the process of iSCSI booting is the same as booting from a local disk.
To configure the iBFT properly, users need to refer to the documentation from their hardware vendors.
If the pathname to the standalone is relative (does not begin with a slash), the second level boot will look for the standalone in a platform-dependent search path. This path is guaranteed to contain /platform/platform-name. Many SPARC platforms next search the platform-specific path entry /platform/hardware-class-name. See filesystem(5). If the pathname is absolute, boot will use the specified path. The boot program then loads the standalone at the appropriate address, and then transfers control.
Once the boot archive has been transferred from the boot device, Solaris can initialize and take over control of the machine. This process is further described in the "Boot Archive Phase," below, and is identical on all platforms.
If the filename is not given on the command line or otherwise specified, for example, by the boot-file NVRAM variable, boot chooses an appropriate default file to load based on what software is installed on the system and the capabilities of the hardware and firmware.
The path to the kernel must not contain any whitespace.
If booting from ZFS, the pathnames of both the archive and the kernel file are resolved in the root file system (that is, dataset) selected for booting as described in the previous section.
The initialization of the kernel continues by loading necessary drivers and modules from the in-memory filesystem until I/O can be turned on and the root filesystem mounted. Once the root filesystem is mounted, the in-memory filesystem is no longer needed and is discarded.
The default boot command has no arguments:
If no device-specifier is given on the boot command line, OpenBoot typically uses the boot-device or diag-device NVRAM variable. If no optional arguments are given on the command line, OpenBoot typically uses the boot-file or diag-file NVRAM variable as default boot arguments. (If the system is in diagnostics mode, diag-device and diag-file are used instead of boot-device and boot-file).
arguments may include more than one string. All argument strings are passed to the secondary booter; they are not interpreted by OpenBoot.
If any arguments are specified on the boot command line, then neither the boot-file nor the diag-file NVRAM variable is used. The contents of the NVRAM variables are not merged with command line arguments. For example, the command:
ignores the settings in both boot-file and diag-file; it interprets the string "-s" as arguments. boot will not use the contents of boot-file or diag-file.
With older PROMs, the command:
took no arguments, using instead the settings in boot-file or diag-file (if set) as the default file name and arguments to pass to boot. In most cases, it is best to allow the boot command to choose an appropriate default based upon the system type, system hardware and firmware, and upon what is installed on the root file system. Changing boot-file or diag-file can generate unexpected results in certain circumstances.
This behavior is found on most OpenBoot 2.x and 3.x based systems. Note that differences may occur on some platforms.
The command:
ok boot cdrom
...also normally takes no arguments. Accordingly, if boot-file is set to the 64-bit kernel filename and you attempt to boot the installation CD or DVD with boot cdrom, boot will fail if the installation media contains only a 32-bit kernel.
Because the contents of boot-file or diag-file can be ignored depending on the form of the boot command used, reliance upon boot-file should be discouraged for most production systems.
When executing a WAN boot from a local (CD or DVD) copy of wanboot, one must use:
ok boot cdrom -F wanboot - install
Modern PROMs have enhanced the network boot support package to support the following syntax for arguments to be processed by the package:
[protocol,] [key=value,]*
All arguments are optional and can appear in any order. Commas are required unless the argument is at the end of the list. If specified, an argument takes precedence over any default values, or, if booting using DHCP, over configuration information provided by a DHCP server for those parameters.
protocol, above, specifies the address discovery protocol to be used.
Configuration parameters, listed below, are specified as key=value attribute pairs.
The list of arguments to be processed by the network boot support package is specified in one of two ways:
Arguments specified in network-boot-arguments will be processed only if there are no arguments passed to the package's open method.
Argument Values
protocol specifies the address discovery protocol to be used. If present, the possible values are rarp or dhcp.
If other configuration parameters are specified in the new syntax and style specified by this document, absence of the protocol parameter implies manual configuration.
If no other configuration parameters are specified, or if those arguments are specified in the positional parameter syntax currently supported, the absence of the protocol parameter causes the network boot support package to use the platform-specific default address discovery protocol.
Manual configuration requires that the client be provided its IP address, the name of the boot file, and the address of the server providing the boot file image. Depending on the network configuration, it might be required that subnet-mask and router-ip also be specified.
If the protocol argument is not specified, the network boot support package uses the platform-specific default address discovery protocol.
tftp-server is the IP address (in standard IPv4 dotted-decimal notation) of the TFTP server that provides the file to download if using TFTP.
When using DHCP, the value, if specified, overrides the value of the TFTP server specified in the DHCP response.
The TFTP RRQ is unicast to the server if one is specified as an argument or in the DHCP response. Otherwise, the TFTP RRQ is broadcast.
file specifies the file to be loaded by TFTP from the TFTP server, or the URL if using HTTP. The use of HTTP is triggered if the file name is a URL, that is, the file name starts with http: (case-insensitive).
When using RARP and TFTP, the default file name is the ASCII hexadecimal representation of the IP address of the client, as documented in a preceding section of this document.
When using DHCP, this argument, if specified, overrides the name of the boot file specified in the DHCP response.
When using DHCP and TFTP, the default file name is constructed from the root node's name property, with commas (,) replaced by periods (.).
When specified on the command line, the filename must not contain slashes ( /).
The format of URLs is described in RFC 2396. The HTTP server must be specified as an IP address (in standard IPv4 dotted-decimal notation). The optional port number is specified in decimal. If a port is not specified, port 80 (decimal) is implied.
The URL presented must be "safe-encoded", that is, the package does not apply escape encodings to the URL presented. URLs containing commas must be presented as a quoted string. Quoting URLs is optional otherwise.
host-ip specifies the IP address (in standard IPv4 dotted-decimal notation) of the client, the system being booted. If using RARP as the address discovery protocol, specifying this argument makes use of RARP unnecessary.
If DHCP is used, specifying the host-ip argument causes the client to follow the steps required of a client with an "Externally Configured Network Address", as specified in RFC 2131.
router-ip is the IP address (in standard IPv4 dotted-decimal notation) of a router on a directly connected network. The router will be used as the first hop for communications spanning networks. If this argument is supplied, the router specified here takes precedence over the preferred router specified in the DHCP response.
subnet-mask (specified in standard IPv4 dotted-decimal notation) is the subnet mask on the client's network. If the subnet mask is not provided (either by means of this argument or in the DHCP response), the default mask appropriate to the network class (Class A, B, or C) of the address assigned to the booting client will be assumed.
client-id specifies the unique identifier for the client. The DHCP client identifier is derived from this value. Client identifiers can be specified as:
Thus, client-id="openboot" and client-id=6f70656e626f6f74 both represent a DHCP client identifier of 6F70656E626F6F74.
Identifiers specified on the command line must must not include slash (/) or spaces.
The maximum length of the DHCP client identifier is 32 bytes, or 64 characters representing 32 bytes if using the ASCII hexadecimal form. If the latter form is used, the number of characters in the identifier must be an even number. Valid characters are 0-9, a-f, and A-F.
For correct identification of clients, the client identifier must be unique among the client identifiers used on the subnet to which the client is attached. System administrators are responsible for choosing identifiers that meet this requirement.
Specifying a client identifier on a command line takes precedence over any other DHCP mechanism of specifying identifiers.
hostname (specified as a string) specifies the hostname to be used in DHCP transactions. The name might or might not be qualified with the local domain name. The maximum length of the hostname is 255 characters.
Note -
http-proxy is specified in the following standard notation for a host:
...where host is specified as an IP ddress (in standard IPv4 dotted-decimal notation) and the optional port is specified in decimal. If a port is not specified, port 8080 (decimal) is implied.
tftp-retries is the maximum number of retries (specified in decimal) attempted before the TFTP process is determined to have failed. Defaults to using infinite retries.
dhcp-retries is the maximum number of retries (specified in decimal) attempted before the DHCP process is determined to have failed. Defaults to of using infinite retries.
If the device identified by GRUB as the boot device contains a ZFS storage pool, the menu.lst file used to create the GRUB menu will be found in the dataset at the root of the pool's dataset hierarchy. This is the dataset with the same name as the pool itself. There is always exactly one such dataset in a pool, and so this dataset is well-suited for pool-wide data such as the menu.lst file. After the system is booted, this dataset is mounted at / poolname in the root file system.
There can be multiple bootable datasets (that is, root file systems) within a pool. By default, the file system in which file name entries in a menu.lst file are resolved is the one identified by the pool's bootfs property (see zpool(1M)). However, a menu.lst entry can contain a bootfs command, which specifies an alternate dataset in the pool. In this way, the menu.lst file can contain entries for multiple root file systems within the pool.
Kernel initialization starts when GRUB finishes loading the boot archive and hands control over to the unix binary. At this point, GRUB becomes inactive and no more I/O occurs with the boot device. The Unix operating system initializes, links in the necessary modules from the boot archive and mounts the root file system on the real root device. At this point, the kernel regains storage I/O, mounts additional file systems (see vfstab(4)), and starts various operating system services (see smf(5)).
The term "consistent" means that all files and modules in the root filesystem are also present in the boot archive and have identical contents. Since the boot strategy requires first reading and mounting the boot archive as the first-stage root image, all unloadable kernel modules and initialization derived from the contents of the boot archive are required to match the real root filesystem. Without such consistency, it is possible that the system could be running with a kernel module or parameter setting applied to the root device before reboot, but not yet updated in the root archive. This inconsistency could result in system instability or data loss.
Once the root filesystem is mounted, and before relinquishing the in-memory filesystem, Solaris performs a consistency verification against the two file systems. If an inconsistency is detected, Solaris suspends the normal boot sequence and falls back to failsafe mode. Correcting this state requires the administrator take one of two steps. The recommended procedure is to reboot to the failsafe archive and rebuild the boot archive. This ensures that a known kernel is booted and functioning for the archive rebuild process. Alternatively, the administrator can elect to clear the inconsistent boot archive service state and continue system bring-up if the inconsistency is such that correct system operation will not be impaired. See svcadm(1M).
If the boot archive service is cleared and system bring-up is continued (the second alternative above), the system may be running with unloadable kernel drivers or other modules that are out-of-date with respect to the root filesystem. As such, correct system operation may be compromised.
To ensure that the boot archive is consistent, the normal system shutdown process, as initiated by reboot(1M) and shutdown(1M), checks for and applies updates to the boot archive at the conclusion of the umountall(1M) milestone.
An update to any kernel file, driver, module or driver configuration file that needs to be included in the boot archive after the umountall service is complete will result in a failed boot archive consistency check during the next boot. To avoid this, it is recommended to always shut down a machine cleanly.
If an update is required to the kernel after completion of the umountall service, the administrator may elect to rebuild the archive by invoking:
...and can be booted as follows:
If a user wishes to boot a failsafe archive from a particular ZFS bootable dataset, this can be done as follows:
...and can be booted by selecting the Solaris failsafe item from the GRUB menu.
A similar sequence occurs for DVD or CD boot, but the master boot block location and contents are dictated by the El Torito specification. The El Torito boot will then continue in the same way as with the hard disk.
Floppy booting is not longer supported. Booting from USB devices follows the same procedure as with hard disks.
An x86 FDISK partition for the Solaris software begins with a one-cylinder boot slice, which contains GRUB stage1 in the first sector, the standard Solaris disk label and volume table of contents (VTOC) in the second and third sectors, and GRUB stage2 in the fiftieth and subsequent sectors. The area from sector 4 to 49 might contain boot blocks for older versions of Solaris. This makes it possible for multiple Solaris releases on the same FDISK to coexist. When the FDISK partition for the Solaris software is the active partition, the master boot program ( mboot) reads the partition boot program in the first sector into memory and jumps to it. It in turn reads GRUB stage2 program into memory and jumps to it. Once the GRUB menu is displayed, the user can choose to boot an operating system on a different partition, a different disk, or possibly from the network.
The behavior is slightly different when a disk is using EFI partitioning. In that case the GRUB stage1 is always installed in the first sector of the disk, and it always loads stage2 from the partition specified at GRUB installation time. This only works on partitions containing a ZFS root pool.
For network booting, the supported method is Intel's Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE) standard. When booting from the network using PXE, the system or network adapter BIOS uses DHCP to locate a network bootstrap program ( pxegrub) on a boot server and reads it using Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP). The BIOS executes the pxegrub by jumping to its first byte in memory. The pxegrub program downloads a menu file and presents the entries to user.
When booting from UFS, the root device is specified by the bootpath property, and the root file system type is specified by the fstype property. These properties should be setup by the Solaris Install/Upgrade process in /boot/solaris/bootenv.rc and can be overridden with the -B option, described above (see the eeprom(1M) man page).
When booting from ZFS, the root device is specified by a boot parameter specified by the -B $ZFS-BOOTFS parameter on either the kernel or module line in the GRUB menu entry. This value (as with all parameters specified by the -B option) is passed by GRUB to the kernel.
If the console properties are not present, console I/O defaults to screen and keyboard. The root device defaults to ramdisk and the file system defaults to ufs.
To boot the default kernel in single-user interactive mode, respond to the ok prompt with one of the following:
boot disk3 -as
Example 2 Network Booting with WAN Boot-Capable PROMs
To illustrate some of the subtle repercussions of various boot command line invocations, assume that the network-boot-arguments are set and that net is devaliased as shown in the commands below.
In the following command, device arguments in the device alias are processed by the device driver. The network boot support package processes arguments in network-boot-arguments.
The command below results in no device arguments. The network boot support package processes arguments in network-boot-arguments.
The command below results in no device arguments. rarp is the only network boot support package argument. network-boot-arguments is ignored.
In the command below, the specified device arguments are honored. The network boot support package processes arguments in network-boot-arguments.
Example 3 Using wanboot with Older PROMs
The command below results in the wanboot binary being loaded from DVD or CD, at which time wanboot will perform DHCP and then drop into its command interpreter to allow the user to enter keys and any other necessary configuration.
To boot the default kernel in single-user interactive mode, edit the GRUB kernel command line to read:
To boot the default kernel in single-user interactive mode, edit the GRUB kernel command line to read:
Example 6 Switching Between 32-bit and 64-bit Kernels on 64-bit x86 Platform
To be able to boot both 32-bit and 64-bit kernels, add entries for both kernels to /boot/grub/menu.lst, and use the set-menu subcommand of bootadm(1M) to switch. See bootadm(1M) for an example of the bootadm set-menu.
RFC 903, A Reverse Address Resolution Protocol, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc903.txt
RFC 2131, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2131.txt
RFC 2132, DHCP Options and BOOTP Vendor Extensions, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2132.txt
RFC 2396, Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt
Sun Hardware Platform Guide
OpenBoot Command Reference Manual
The current release of the Solaris operating system does not support machines running an UltraSPARC-I CPU.
| June 7, 2015 |