Manual

40 SPARC Enterprise T5140 and T5240 Servers Administration Guide • February 2008
Auto-Boot Options
The system firmware stores a configuration variable called auto-boot?, which
controls whether the firmware will automatically boot the operating system after
each reset. The default setting for SPARC Enterprise platforms is true.
Normally, if a system fails power-on diagnostics, auto-boot? is ignored and the
system does not boot unless an operator boots the system manually. An automatic
boot is generally not acceptable for booting a system in a degraded state. Therefore,
the server OpenBoot firmware provides a second setting, auto-boot-on-error?.
This setting controls whether the system will attempt a degraded boot when a
subsystem failure is detected. Both the auto-boot? and auto-boot-on-error?
switches must be set to true to enable an automatic degraded boot. To set the
switches, type:
Note – The default setting for auto-boot-on-error? is false. The system will
not attempt a degraded boot unless you change this setting to true. In addition, the
system will not attempt a degraded boot in response to any fatal nonrecoverable
error, even if degraded booting is enabled. For examples of fatal nonrecoverable
errors, see “Error Handling Summary” on page 40.
Error Handling Summary
Error handling during the power-on sequence falls into one of the following three
cases:
■ If no errors are detected by POST or OpenBoot firmware, the system attempts to
boot if auto-boot? is true.
■ If only nonfatal errors are detected by POST or OpenBoot firmware, the system
attempts to boot if auto-boot? is true and auto-boot-on-error? is true.
Nonfatal errors include the following:
■ SAS subsystem failure. In this case, a working alternate path to the boot disk is
required. For more information, see “Multipathing Software” on page 47.
■ Ethernet interface failure.
■ USB interface failure.
■ Serial interface failure.
■ PCI card failure.
ok setenv auto-boot? true
ok setenv auto-boot-on-error? true