Luke Mewburn lukem@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au writes
"Jim McCoy" writes:
You really don't even need to boot floppy (search for the the
"floppy-boot?"
setting in the boot system) if you are in a hurry.
Do you know an easy way to unset floppy-boot? on a running machine, without halting back to `ok '?
There is no way to do this, and I agree with you that this is an unpleasant situation. On several occasions I have had to set a box to floppy boot (usually when an emergency forces me to run a 25/7 or prev_cp and I am somewhat distant from physical console access but can get to a console server over the net) and if I am using this hack to get the box running in the first place I am in no hurry to run it through another reboot just to turn off the floppy boot option, particularly if I am not sure the system will come up again if I do happen to reboot it...
jim
I truly apologize for this.
This is a weird one. This is not a "feature" of our box, it was something I put in that exploits capabilities of the PROM (OpenFirmware) to allow floppy boot like processing at boot time.
You see, in development engineering, we used to have a special build kernels that allow booting off hard disk, but still going through the "floppy boot menu", and profiled kernels for performance analysis...
I, being extremely bored watching linking kernels, made it dynamically configurable... I was playing many games quickly when I hung out alone in a small perf lab.
It was not meant for field use... But obviously you guys are using it...
Let me check, and see if there is not yet an open RFE on this. I will submit one, asking for enable/disable of PROM environment variables from running system...
Ouch.
In one sense, I regret adding these features - since it is truly a break from the design of a simple box (the original design was that a floppy was required to access maintenance menu - I did an incomplete end run - but the remote console operation precludes floppy loading, so what is the real requirement here?)
No promises on a solution here...
Again, my apologies...
Luke Mewburn lukem@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au writes
"Jim McCoy" writes:
You really don't even need to boot floppy (search for the the
"floppy-boot?"
setting in the boot system) if you are in a hurry.
Do you know an easy way to unset floppy-boot? on a running machine, without halting back to `ok '?
There is no way to do this, and I agree with you that this is an unpleasant situation. On several occasions I have had to set a box to floppy boot (usually when an emergency forces me to run a 25/7 or prev_cp and I am somewhat distant from physical console access but can get to a console server over the net) and if I am using this hack to get the box running in the first place I am in no hurry to run it through another reboot just to turn off the floppy boot option, particularly if I am not sure the system will come up again if I do happen to reboot it...
jim
Brian Pawlowski writes:
In one sense, I regret adding these features - since it is truly a break from the design of a simple box (the original design was that a floppy was required to access maintenance menu - I did an incomplete end run - but the remote console operation precludes floppy loading, so what is the real requirement here?)
It's still a useful option to have, especially when you're working on the filer from home over a serial console, and no-one else is in the office (because it's 8am)
No promises on a solution here...
Again, my apologies...
No problems; it's a cool feature in principle.
Hello Brian,
also from me a big thank you for this feature. Without it remote support would be very hard. And a command to change to firmware variables from a running system would be really valuable.
Oliver
-----Original Message----- From: owner-dl-toasters@netapp.com [mailto:owner-dl-toasters@netapp.com]On Behalf Of Brian Pawlowski Sent: Donnerstag, 22. April 1999 02:33 To: mccoy@yahoo-inc.com Cc: lukem@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au; toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: Y2K: Any one rolled a filer forward & backwards?
I truly apologize for this.
This is a weird one. This is not a "feature" of our box, it was something I put in that exploits capabilities of the PROM (OpenFirmware) to allow floppy boot like processing at boot time.
You see, in development engineering, we used to have a special build kernels that allow booting off hard disk, but still going through the "floppy boot menu", and profiled kernels for performance analysis...
I, being extremely bored watching linking kernels, made it dynamically configurable... I was playing many games quickly when I hung out alone in a small perf lab.
It was not meant for field use... But obviously you guys are using it...
Let me check, and see if there is not yet an open RFE on this. I will submit one, asking for enable/disable of PROM environment variables from running system...
Ouch.
In one sense, I regret adding these features - since it is truly a break from the design of a simple box (the original design was that a floppy was required to access maintenance menu - I did an incomplete end run - but the remote console operation precludes floppy loading, so what is the real requirement here?)
No promises on a solution here...
Again, my apologies...
Luke Mewburn lukem@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au writes
"Jim McCoy" writes:
You really don't even need to boot floppy (search for the the
"floppy-boot?"
setting in the boot system) if you are in a hurry.
Do you know an easy way to unset floppy-boot? on a running machine, without halting back to `ok '?
There is no way to do this, and I agree with you that this
is an unpleasant
situation. On several occasions I have had to set a box to
floppy boot
(usually when an emergency forces me to run a 25/7 or
prev_cp and I am
somewhat distant from physical console access but can get
to a console
server over the net) and if I am using this hack to get the
box running in
the first place I am in no hurry to run it through another
reboot just to
turn off the floppy boot option, particularly if I am not
sure the system
will come up again if I do happen to reboot it...
jim
On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, Brian Pawlowski wrote:
In one sense, I regret adding these features - since it is truly a break from the design of a simple box (the original design was that a floppy was required to access maintenance menu - I did an incomplete end run - but the remote console operation precludes floppy loading, so what is the real requirement here?)
The variable does not imply booting from a floppy. It implies booting in diagnostic mode from whatever the boot device happens to be (floppy, net, disk, perhaps a serial port (?)). "boot-floppy" may be a misnomer, but it is EXTREMELY usefull with remote consoles and not usefull very much when booting from floppies.
Tom
-
beepy＠netapp.com -
Jim McCoy -
Luke Mewburn -
Oliver Krause -
tkaczma＠gryf.net