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

History of the setboot Command

The setboot command displays and modifies boot variables in stable storage. Some of these variables are –

• Primary Boot Path

• HA Alternate Boot Path (supported on some platforms)

• Alternate Boot Path

• AutoBoot

• AutoSearch (supported on HP 9000 platforms only)

In HP-UX releases up to 11i v2, setboot accepted only hardware paths as valid input for Primary, HA Alternate

and Alternate boot paths. These hardware paths were composed of a series of bus-nexus addresses separated by

‘/’ leading to the host bus adapter (HBA); beneath the HBA, additional address elements were separated by ‘.’.

Parallel SCSI and IDE devices use a SCSI-2 addressing paradigm, where the addressing beyond the HBA consists

of a target port id and a LUN id. Hardware paths for Fibre Channel disks were coerced into the SCSI-2

addressing paradigm by creating virtual controllers, virtual targets and virtual LUNs.

Examples: "0/0/2/0.1.7.0" and “0/4/1/0.1.6.0.0.2.1”

This hardware path format is still supported on HP-UX 11i v3 where it is referred to as legacy hardware path. HP-

UX 11i v3 also introduces a new representation of mass storage devices, known as the agile view. In the agile

view, devices have new device special file names and new hardware paths representations (explained later in

this document). The setboot command has been modified to accept as input some of these agile representations, to

take advantage of the native multi-pathing and automatic failover capabilities of the agile view.

See

For More Information for a white paper about The Next Generation Mass Storage Stack.