HP-UX System Administrator's Guide: Configuration Management

NOTE:
This is a note. It provides information about how the operation completed,
or other information of potential interest to the administrator.
*
This is a progress message. It displays the steps completed during the
operation.
Common Exit Status Codes
All of the kernel configuration commands exit with one of the following status codes.
0
The operation was successful.
1
The requested changes could not be applied to the currently running system. They
are being held and will be applied at next boot.
2
The operation could not complete successfully.
Common Security Constraints
Any user can run the kernel configuration commands to query configuration
information. However, access to configuration information is subject to standard UNIX
file system permissions on the relevant files.
Superuser privileges are required to make any configuration changes.
Persistence of Changes
By default, the kernel configuration tools will apply configuration changes to the
currently running system, causing an immediate change in behavior. System
administrators can override this default by specifying the -h (hold) option on any of
the commands. This option causes the changes to be held until the system is rebooted.
HP recommends that this option be used only when the next reboot is expected to
happen soon. If the reboot doesn't happen for months after the change, the change
could come as an unwelcome surprise to an administrator who has forgotten the request.
Some configuration changes cannot be applied without a reboot. These changes will
be held until the system is rebooted even if the –h option is not specified. In these cases,
a warning message is printed.
If multiple configuration changes are requested in a single invocation of one of the
kernel configuration commands, and any one of those changes requires a reboot, all of
the requested changes will be held until the system is rebooted. In particular, if a saved
kernel configuration is loaded using kconfig –l (load), and that configuration cannot
be used without a reboot, the state of the running system is not changed and the
specified kernel configuration will be used at next boot instead.
Changes being held for next boot can be listed using the -D (differences) option on the
kcmodule, kctune, or kconfig commands.
Changes being held for next boot are discarded as follows: when the currently running
configuration is replaced using kconfig –i (import), kconfig –l (load), or kconfig
Common Behavior for Kernel Configuration Commands 159