07/21/97 Seminar - Startup and Shutdown

• Booting HPUX machines
  When starting up an HP, there are several layers that the boot process goes through before allowing you to log in to your machine (either at the console or in CDE).
  
  • Autoboot stage
    If your machine is set to autoboot, it will not give you the BOOT> prompt. Instead, it will try to find a device that it can go to the next stage with (the ISL). To stop the autoboot, hit the ESC key. If your HP does not present you with the option of aborting the autoboot, then your machine is in Secure Mode. To unset secure mode, you need to unplug all bootable devices (this include the network, all harddrives, tapes, and CDROMs). Once you get the BOOT prompt, type secure off. You can then power off your machine and plug everything back in.
  • BOOT prompt
    Depending on your hardware, you may be given a menu from which you can select the BOOT prompt (or "Administration mode"). Do this if needed. From here, there are many things you can select. Most of the options change depending on what kind of hardware you have. Several commands are the same:
    • help - this gives you a list of commands that are available.
    • search - this will present you with a list of devices and "paths" that you can boot an ISL from.
    • boot [path/device] (isl) - this will attempt to boot into the ISL stage from a given device or path. Two paths are pre-set: the primary and secondary paths. These paths are used for booting during the Autoboot stage. To boot your primary path device (emulating what the autoboot would normally do) type in "boot pri". After doing a search there may be other paths (P0, P1, etc) that you could boot off of. The device name will be listed along with the path. If your CDROM is P1, then "boot p1" would boot off your CDROM device. The last option to boot is the "isl" option. With this in the command line, the ISL will stop to interact with you. "boot pri isl" will boot your primary device, stopping to use the ISL.
    • secure (on/off) - this shows what state the Secure mode is in. If you give it either an on or off option, it will set the secure mode. With secure mode on, you cannot break out of an autoboot if there are bootable devices.
    • path [pri/sec] [device] - set your two default boot paths. To set your default primary boot path to your CDROM you would type something like "path pri scsi.2.0". Use search to find out the device name you should use for the path command.
  • ISL prompt
    Once you reach the ISL prompt, you are in the LIF block of your boot device. All this means is that you have actually managed to boot off the device you chose. From here, you need to select a utility to boot. Several commands are built in, and the rest can be seen by asking for a list of the LIF area with ls:
    • help - this gives you a list of built in utilities available. Sometimes this list shows things that you can't run.
    • ls - this will show you what utilities exist in the LIF area. Usually, you will find "hpux" listed. This is your default OS and Kernel. It is possible to have multiple kernels in the same LIF area. (The Support CD does this.) Other utilities could exist as well. For example, if you have installed the OnlineDiag bundle, you will find the ODE utility for running limited diagnostics on your machine.
    • utility [options] - runs a utility with specified options. For example, to boot into single user mode, you send an init state of "s" to the HPUX kernel with "hpux -is".

• Run Levels
  When an HPUX machine boots up, it has a default run level (usually 4) that is in the /etc/inittab file. To boot up, init will run all the scripts in each of the /sbin/rc?.d directories that start with an "S", where the "?" are each of the runlevels from 0 through the "current" level. For example, to boot to runlevel 2, from the ISL prompt you type "hpux -i2". When init runs, it will run all the scripts in /sbin/rc0.d, then /sbin/rc1.d, and finally those in /sbin/rc2.d.

• Shutting Down HPUX machines
  There are several methods available to shutdown or change the run level of an HPUX machine:
  • Switching Run Levels
    To change run levels, just type "/sbin/init runlevel". init will take care of shutting down the scripts started in all the runlevels above the one you requested. "/sbin/shutdown -y 0" will also bring the machine down to single-user mode.
  • Shutting Down for real
    You can use the "/sbin/shutdown" command to either halt or reboot an HPUX machine:
    • Halt - /sbin/shutdown -h grace time
      
    • Reboot - /sbin/shutdown -r grace time
      Where grace time is in seconds. I usuaully use "0". :)
  • The Power Switch
    On the newer 700 series machines and the C-class machines, the power switch actually runs "shutdown -h 0", so in a pinch, you can just turn the machine OFF.

• More Information directly from HP:
  • System Boot and Startup White Paper
  • Startup and Configuration White paper
  • Start/Kill Sequence Numbers White Paper