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

Administering a System: Booting and Shutdown
Booting Systems
Chapter 5488
For information about the specific hardware paths available on your
system, refer to the output of ioscan (see ioscan (1M) for details on how
to run ioscan). Also, some path information is physically printed on your
system.
Usually, the primary boot path points to the device from which you most
frequently boot and that device is available.
Once the boot device has been initialized, PDC (firmware routines)
access a specially formatted area on the boot device, called a LIF volume.
PDC loads the Initial System Loader (ISL) into memory and transfers
control to it.
Step 4. Kernel file selection:
If uninterrupted (and if the autoboot flag is enabled -- See “Automatic
Versus Manual Booting” on page 489) ISL will load and initiate the
HP-UX-specific boot loader hpux.
Step 5. Load and initiate the HP-UX operating system:
HP-UX uses the contents of the AUTO file in the LIF area on the boot
device to:
1. locate the kernel file to boot
2. load the HP-UX kernel into memory
3. initiate the HP-UX kernel
Typically, the AUTO file contains:
hpux vmunix
which tells hpux to load the kernel from the file called vmunix from the
default file system (/stand -- the file /stand/vmunix).
Step 6. HP-UX goes through its initialization process and begins normal
operation.