Managing Systems and Workgroups: A Guide for HP-UX System Administrators

Administering a System: Booting and Shutdown
Booting Systems
Chapter 5 487
System hardware or hardware associated with an nPartition you are
booting will go through a series of self-tests to verify that the processors,
memory, and other system components are in working order.
Step 3. Boot device selection:
Your system (or the nPartition you are booting) must locate a kernel file
to boot from. There are two parts to the search:
Part 1 determine the hardware path to the boot device
Part 2 determine which kernel file on the hardware path to
boot (see Step 4)
Path variables stored in non-volatile memory set up to three possible
boot paths from which to attempt a boot:
PRI The PRImary boot path is the first boot path to try. Set
the value of this path to point to the device from which
you will boot most often.
HAA The High-Availability Alternate boot path, on systems
that support it, is the path you want your system to
boot from should your primary boot path fail.
ALT The ALTernate boot path is the hardware path to an
alternate boot source (for example, a tape drive,
network-based boot source, or optical disc drive).
On some systems only the primary boot path is automatically tried. On
those systems, in order to boot from the alternate boot path you need to
override the 10 second autoboot delay.
On other systems, firmware can be configured to associate various boot
actions with each boot path. These boot actions allow you to tell the
system:
• whether to attempt or ignore a boot path
• if unsuccessful booting from a boot path, whether or not to try the
next path in the sequence PRI -> HAA -> ALT
• whether or not to use the Boot Console Handler (BCH) interface