Examples of using Solaris boot command

The solaris boot command when used with various optional parameters will change
the booting behavior.

Syntax
The common syntax of boot command is solaris SPARC system is :

ok> boot [device-specifier] [arguments]

The Common Boot [device-specifier]s are :

1. Disk
2. cdrom
3. net (network boot image)
4. url (jumpstart)

Example 1 : Normal Boot

The boot command without any arguments will boot the system into multi-user mode
by default.

ok> boot

Example 2 :
The -a option will ask for configuration information such as where to find the system
file, where to mount root, and even override the name of the kernel itself. This is very
useful in case of a corrupt /etc/system file or any other such file that may be used in
booting process. Simply enter /dev/null when asked for /etc/system. The default
responses are mentioned in square brackets []. Press enter to select the default
options.

ok> boot -a

Example 3 : Verbose mode

To boot the system in verbose mode :

ok> boot -v

Example 4 : Single user mode

To boot the system into single user mode (init level “s”) use the -s argument. In this
mode all local file systems are mounted and only a small set of essential kernel
processes are left running. This mode is usually used in case of patching the system.
No users can login into the system through network.
ok> boot -s

Example 5 : Non-cluster mode

The -x option is used only in case of sun cluster, to boot into non cluster mode.

ok> boot -x

Example 6 : Reconfiguration boot

When booted in reconfiguration mode, the system will probe all the hardware devices
and update the logical as well as physical namespaces in /dev and /devices
respectively.

ok> boot -r

Example 7 :
The -f argument causes Autoclient systems to flush and reinitialize the client system’s
local cache and read all files over the network from the client’s file server. This flag is
ignored for all non-Autoclient systems.

ok> boot -f

Example 8 :
The -D argument specifies the default file. In general without this option the system will
choose a dynamic default file.

ok> boot -D [default_file]

Example 9 :
The argument -w forces root file system to be mounted as read-write while booting.
But this option is not implemented. The ufs root filesystem is mounted read-only to
avoid problems during fsck. After fsck runs, it is remounted as read-write.

ok> boot -w

Example 10 : SMF options

The -m argument can be used to specify the SMF options for booting the system

ok> boot -m [options]

The various options that can be specified with -m are :

verbose - Print a line for each service as it is started

quiet - Very quiet boot; suppresses standard per-service output and error
messages requiring administrative intervention.
debug - Boot in serial mode, with status logging of service success or
failure output to the console. The stdout and stderr streams of each method
invoked will be connected to the console, as well as the standard logging
facilities smf(5) provides.
milestone=[milestone-level] - Boot to a subgraph defined by the given
milestone.

The various milestone levels are :

none - disable all services.

single-user - roughly the equivalent of run level 1 or S
multi-user - roughly the equivalent of run level 2
multi-user-server - roughly the equivalent of run level 3
all - all enabled services

Example 11 : Failsafe mode

Starting solaris 10 update 6, a ZFS root FS OS can be booted in failsafe mode for
troubleshooting when the OS on the primary boot environment fails to boot.

ok> boot -F failsafe

Example 11 : Boot from bootable ZFS dataset

The -L argument allows booting from specific zfs bootable datasets on the disk. The
bootable datasets are mentioned in /rpool/boot/menu.lst file. This is common to all
datasets under the rpool. Additional entries to the menu.lst are added via the Live
Upgrade process for Boot Environments(BEs). The menu.lst file is updated during the
shutdown process(init 0 | init 6) after an luactivate has been performed.

ok> boot -L
Rebooting with command: boot -L
Boot device: /pci@1f,700000/scsi@2/disk@0,0:a File and args: -L
1. zfsroot
2. zfsroot-with-patch
Select environment to boot: [ 1 - 2 ]: 1
To boot the selected entry, invoke: boot [ root-device ] -Z
rootpool/ROOT/zfsroot

Example 12 :
With the -Z argument, you can directly specify the bootable zfs dataset to boot from.

ok> boot -Z rootpool/ROOT/zfsroot

Network Booting
The SPARC systems can be booted from network either by using RARP/bootparams
or DHCP.

Example 13 : using RARP

When using RARP option to boot over network, the PROM makes a reverse ARP
request. On a reply to this request, the PROM broadcasts a TFTP request to fetch
inetboot over the network from any server that responds and executes it.
ok> boot net:rarp

Example 14 : using DHCP

When using the DHCP option to boot over network, the PROM broadcasts the MAC
address and kernel architecture of the system and requests an IP address, boot
parameters, and network configuration information. On receiving the information from
DHCP server, PROM downloads inetboot, loads that file into memory, and executes it.
inetboot invokes the kernel, which loads the files it needs and releases inetboot.

ok> boot net:dhcp

Troubleshooting
Now various boot arguments discussed above can be used together to troubleshoot a
booting issue. The most commonly used combination of arguments are :

Example 15 : interactive, verbose, single-user using local disk

ok> boot -avs

Example 16 : interactive, verbose, single-user using cdrom

ok> boot cdrom -avs

Example 17 : interactive, verbose, single-user using network

ok> boot net -avs