BOOT_VAX(8)          OpenBSD System Manager's Manual (VAX)         BOOT_VAX(8)

NAME
     boot_vax - vax-specific 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's front panel, an au-
     tomatic consistency check of the file systems will be performed, and un-
     less 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 re-
     boot.  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-us-
     er 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 speci-
     fy 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 al-
     so defined in <sys/reboot.h>.  The current encoding has a historical ba-
     sis, 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 an n of 1 causes the boot program to ask for the name of
     the system to be bootstrapped, giving an n of 2 causes the boot program
     to come up single-user, and an n of 3 causes both of these actions to oc-
     cur.  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 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 (bsd by default), loads that file into memory location zero,
     and starts the program at the entry address specified in the program
     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)bsd'' at the boot prompt;
     ``hp(2,0,1,0)bsd'' would specify drive 1 on MASSBUS adaptor 2;
     ``up(0,0)bsd'' would specify a UNIBUS drive, ``hk(0,0)bsd'' would specify
     an RK07 disk drive, ``ra(1,0,0,0)bsd'' would specify a UDA50 disk drive
     on a second UNIBUS, and ``rb(0,0)bsd'' 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 in-
     stalled by boot if the file psc750.bin exists in the root of the filesys-
     tem 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
     /bsd              default system kernel
     /bsd.rd           standalone installation kernel, suitable for disaster
                       recovery
     /boot             system bootstrap
     /usr/mdec/xxboot  sector-0 boot block for 750, xx is disk type
     /usr/mdec/bootxx  second-stage boot for 750, xx is disk type
     /pcs750.bin       microcode patch file on 750

SEE ALSO
     halt(8), reboot(8), shutdown(8)

HISTORY
     The boot_vax command appeared in 4.0BSD.

OpenBSD 4.7                      May 31, 2007                                3
