SUMMARY: Setting default boot device on Sun 4/110 ..

From: Thomas Leitner (tom@finwds01.tu-graz.ac.at)
Date: Sun Aug 09 1998 - 10:14:51 CDT


Hi,

The answer is simple. There's a "eeprom" command in both Solaris 2.x
and Solaris 1.x (SunOS 4.1.3_U1 which I'm using). Entering "eeprom"
from the root account said (among others):

     bootdev=(0,0,0)

I entered

     eeprom bootdev="sd(0,18,0)"

and it kept the setting. I've not yet tested to boot the machine because
I'm working from remote now but I expect that it works.

Thanks to: G W Cantello <glenn.w.cantello@hydro.on.ca>
           Patrick L. Nolan <pln@egret1.Stanford.EDU>
           Steve Butterfield <steveb@pcs.co.uk>

for their replies which I'm appending below, followed by my
original posting.

Tom

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: G W Cantello <glenn.w.cantello@hydro.on.ca>

It has been a while.
I think down at the eeprom level (OK prompt) you do something like,

setenv boot-device sd(0,18,0)

If I still had one I could check but...

good luck,
glenn
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Patrick L. Nolan <pln@egret1.Stanford.EDU>

I'm working by memory here. We used to have a 4/390.
There's a command "eeprom" which is used to change settings in the boot prom.
The necessary setting is called something like "default-boot-device".
That may not be right, but it's something like that. Just run eeprom with
no arguments to make it list all the options. The right one should be
obvious.

Many of these old machines would always give a spurious error message saying
that the eeprom checksum is wrong. The eeprom command has an option that
lets you override the checksum test.

That 18 is 8*(scsi address) in hexadecimal, so your disk address must be 3.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Steve Butterfield <steveb@pcs.co.uk>

Thomas,

    In all SunOS / Solaris releases you have had the eeprom command to do
this i.e.

eeprom boot-from sd(0,18,0)
or whatever the field is called. eeprom on its own will list all field names
and settings.

There is a more complex way from the PROM monitor for non openboot platforms
such as the 4/110 ( 7 mips of raw processing power :-) ) but this is the
easiest. Let me
know if you need the other way.

Best Regards

Steve Butterfield.

--------------------- o r i g i n a l p o s t i n g -----------------

Hi,

I know that this is a rather ancient question but anyway: Does anyone
here remember how to set the default boot device on a Sun 4/110
(the VME bus based deskside model, not the SparcStation 4/110!!) ??

Currently I need to enter:

      b sd(0,18,0)

for booting the machine. When entering only "b" or when the machine
powers up, it tries to boot from a different SCSI ID (don't know
which). In any case: I cannot move the system disk to another SCSI ID
so I'm stuck with "b sd(0,18,0)".

Can anyone remember how to make this the default boot device?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
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