In message 199904211921.PAA30871@trail.cimedia.com, Ozzie Sabina writes:
+-- "Jason D. Kelleher" kelleher@susq.com once said: | slides they called a book for "prev_cp - boot from prior | consistency point" -- they should've spent more money on books and | less on leather jackets) in the Special Commands Section.
It's bookbags now. The saved money didn't go to the books.
| This worked with a 4.1.x boot floppy in class, not sure about the | 5.x boot floppies. As I recall it was for recovering from a | severely fubar'd filesystem.
Yes, you can do this from the 5.x floppies. The deal with snap restore was to make it 'easier' for people, although you still have to reboot the box (and you don't really physically need a floppy to do a 'floppy boot'), so it seems to be a minor difference to me. Hoever,
^^^^^^^^^^^
Didn't know that. I'll file it under "emergency things I hope I never need to know". :)
you can revert a specific volume only to a previous CP - I can't remember if you can do that from the floppy menu.
Oz
+-- "Jason D. Kelleher" kelleher@susq.com once said: | >Yes, you can do this from the 5.x floppies. The deal with snap | >restore was to make it 'easier' for people, although you still have to | >reboot the box (and you don't really physically need a floppy to do a | >'floppy boot'), so it seems to be a minor difference to me. Hoever, | ^^^^^^^^^^^ | | Didn't know that. I'll file it under "emergency things I hope I | never need to know". :)
I think someone on this list recently covered how to do this, but I'll do it again. (I'm doing this from memory, and believe I have it all right, but someone please correct me if there are any details missing/incorrect):
1. Halt the machine (and have a console on it).
2. The console will drop to the "ok" prompt. You need to set the 'floppy-boot?' PROM environment variable. To do this: 'setenv floppy-boot? true'
3. Type 'boot' at the console to boot the machine.
4. When the machine gets to the point of recognizing all of the disks, you'll get a prompt saying "Floppy Boot(y/n)?" (or something similar). Answer 'y'.
5. To get the box to not ask you about the floppy boot evertime after you've completed whatever you wanted to do from the floppy, either set the floppy-boot? environment variable to 'false' or use 'unsetenv' to remove it.
Oz
On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, Jason D. Kelleher wrote:
(and you don't really physically need a floppy to do a 'floppy boot'), so it seems to be a minor difference to me.
^^^^^^^^^^^
Didn't know that. I'll file it under "emergency things I hope I never need to know". :)
Another thing to file under that heading is the fact that NACs are excellent network booters thanks to their OpenBoot. Just in case you had a NAC whose disks decided to become utterly corrupted.
I just wish there was a way to enable breaks from console. Then I wouldn't have to go down to the computer room at all to service them. Well, maybe if they became COMPLETELY hosed. If someone knows how to enable this, I'd greatly appreciate the information. Also, the equivalent of the "go" command would be very usefull to go along with the above.
Tom
I just wish there was a way to enable breaks from console.
By "enable breaks" do you mean the "BREAK causes the OS to jump to the PROM monitor" stuff that SunOS (including 5.x) does?
We don't detect BREAK or respond to it, but there's probably no reason we couldn't do that.
I don't know if our serial port is set up so that unplugging a terminal (or terminal server) and plugging it back in looks like a BREAK; that's one of the suckages on at least some Suns.
On Thu, 22 Apr 1999, Guy Harris wrote:
I don't know if our serial port is set up so that unplugging a terminal (or terminal server) and plugging it back in looks like a BREAK; that's one of the suckages on at least some Suns.
Actually I believe its a suckage of terminals, but that's not the point.
Tom
Cwaeth tkaczma@gryf.net:
I just wish there was a way to enable breaks from console. Then I wouldn't have to go down to the computer room at all to service them. Well, maybe if they became COMPLETELY hosed. If someone knows how to enable this, I'd greatly appreciate the information.
Do you mean, "type <break> on the console and drop to the ok prompt just like on a Sun workstation?"
If so, we consciously decided *not* to implement that behavior because such innocuous activites as plugging and unplugging the console cable could drop you into firmware. To make matters worse, you might not even know you've done it until all the users light torches and grab pitchforks because the server's gone dark.
Given a choice, we chose to try and keep the server up, no matter what.
Also, the equivalent of the "go" command would be very usefull to go along with the above.
Have you tried "go"? :-)
Mike Tuciarone Platform Software
On Thu, 22 Apr 1999, Michael J. Tuciarone wrote:
Do you mean, "type <break> on the console and drop to the ok prompt just like on a Sun workstation?"
I do, exactly!
If so, we consciously decided *not* to implement that behavior because such innocuous activites as plugging and unplugging the console cable could drop you into firmware.
Only if you have a really DUMB terminal (pun intended), or an administrator with similar qualities for that matter. BTW, unplugging the terminal does not have that effect, and only some terminals are stupid enough to "send a break" when you turn them on (assert CD or something, I forget). I don't have a problem with providing an environment variable to enable this just as in "boot-floppy," but I have to tell you that this is for me THE MOST ANNOYING "FEATURE" of the NAC. I think that there are plenty of NAC admins that hate being patronized by vendors in this way.
This is the only thing that makes me go down to the computer room in order to fix a NAC that had a bad day aside from changing hardware and VERY BAD things when OpenBoot hangs (hasn't happened yet on a NAC <knock on wood>).
Given a choice, we chose to try and keep the server up, no matter what.
Not the best idea considering that trying to reboot your server with corrupted disks puts it into a "neverending" loop.
Also, the equivalent of the "go" command would be very usefull to go along with the above.
Have you tried "go"? :-)
I think I did, although I'm not sure how usefull it is considering that there is no breaking on the console. I do have a box that's not in service yet, I'll verify if "go" exists. If it does, all I need is a super secret way of dropping the box to the ok prompt from the console. ;) Pleeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaase! ;)
Tom
-
guy＠netapp.com -
Jason D. Kelleher -
Michael J. Tuciarone -
Ozzie Sabina -
tkaczma＠gryf.net