setboot(1M) in HP-UX 11i v3

Impacts to Other Subsystems
This section describes how other HP-UX subsystems are affected by the changes to setboot.
The changes for the mass storage stack and Hyper-Threading support have affected certain subsystems of HP-UX.
Booting an HP 9000 system from the BCH menu
On HP 9000 systems, the system boot environment is the Boot Console Handler (BCH). The system boot
environment is used to locate boot devices and launch pre-boot applications. On HP-UX 11i v3, the boot path
stored by setboot in stable storage is the lunpath hardware path of the boot device. For a Fibre Channel
boot device, the lunpath hardware path includes elements like the target port World Wide Name (WWN)
which is coded on 64 bits and the LUN id which may be coded on 64 bits. However the BCH interface can only
handle elements of a maximum size of 32 bits. Some conversion and reformatting is necessary in order to display
these elements in the BCH menu: the 64-bit elements are displayed as two 32-bit numbers. As a result,
• the WWN 0x50001fe15001eea9 is displayed as 0x50001fe1.0x5001eea9
• the LUN Id 0x4001000000000000 is displayed as 0x40010000 (the null element may be omitted)
• the lunpath hardware path 0/5/1/0.0x50001fe15001eea9.0x4001000000000000
is displayed as
0/5/1/0.0x50001fe1.0x5001eea9.0x40010000
Note: This BCH specific format can be displayed with the command ioscan –e on HP 9000 systems (see ioscan
for more details). Also on some systems, the output of the BCH commands that display boot paths is provided in
decimal only. In this case, a manual conversion to hexadecimal is required in order to recognize the WWN and
LUN id elements of the boot paths.
Virtual Partitions (vPars)
The setboot feature enhancements are supported in the vPars environment, but with certain restrictions.
Enabling or disabling HT not supported on vPars
The setboot command does not allow the user to enable or disable HT (Hyper-Threading) settings when running on
a vPars system, since the command setboot [ –m on | off ] modifies firmware settings, which is not possible on a
vPars system. To change the HT settings, the user needs first to reboot to nPar mode or go to the EFI shell.
The setboot command can still be used to read the current HT settings.
To change Hyper-Threading settings at the firmware level, you need to shutdown the vPars and reboot in nPars
mode. You can then change the firmware settings from the EFI Shell by using the "cpuconfig" command or using
setboot on the running HP-UX.
HA-Alternate Boot Path not supported on vPars
The boot path setting of High-Availability Alternate (HAA) is not supported for vPars. Attempts to modify HAA
settings by running setboot on a vPars system will be ignored and an explanatory message displayed (see below).
Please refer to the HP-UX Virtual Partitions Administrator’s Guide for more information.
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