NetBSD-5.0.2/share/man/man8/man8.i386/boot.8

.\"	$NetBSD: boot.8,v 1.47 2008/10/30 09:49:23 apb Exp $
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.\"     @(#)boot_i386.8	8.2 (Berkeley) 4/19/94
.\"
.Dd October 30, 2008
.Os
.Dt BOOT 8 i386
.Sh NAME
.Nm boot
.Nd
system bootstrapping procedures
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Tn IA-32
computers
.Po
the
.Tn IBM PC
and its clones
.Pc
that can run
.Nx Ns /i386
can use any of the following boot procedures, depending on what the hardware and
.Tn BIOS
support:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -width "pxeboot(8)"
.It boot
bootstrap
.Nx
from the system
.Tn BIOS
.It Xr dosboot 8
bootstrap
.Nx
from
.Tn MS-DOS
.It Xr w95boot 8
bootstrap
.Nx
from
.Tn Windows 95
.It Xr pxeboot 8
network bootstrap
.Nx
from a
.Tn TCP/IP
.Tn LAN
with
.Tn DHCP ,
.Tn TFTP ,
and
.Tn NFS .
.El
.Ss Power fail and crash recovery
Normally, the system will reboot itself at power-up or after crashes.
An automatic consistency check of the file systems will be performed,
and unless this fails, the system will resume multi-user operations.
.Ss Cold starts
The 386
.Tn "PC AT"
clones attempt to boot the floppy disk drive A (otherwise known as drive
0) first, and failing that, attempt to boot the hard disk C (otherwise
known as hard disk controller 1, drive 0).
The
.Nx
bootblocks are loaded and started either by the
.Tn BIOS ,
or by a boot selector program (such as OS-BS, BOOTEASY, the OS/2 Boot Menu or
.Nx Ns 's
.No boot-selecting
master boot record - see
.Xr mbr 8 ) .
.Ss Normal Operation
Once running, a banner similar to the following will appear:
.Bd -unfilled -offset indent
\*[Gt]\*[Gt] NetBSD BIOS Boot, revision 3.0
\*[Gt]\*[Gt] (user@buildhost, builddate)
\*[Gt]\*[Gt] Memory: 637/15360 k
Press return to boot now, any other key for boot menu
booting hd0a:netbsd - starting in 5
.Ed
.Pp
After a countdown, the system image listed will be loaded.
In the example above, it will be
.Dq Li hd0a:netbsd
which is the file
.Nm netbsd
on partition
.Dq a
of the
.Nx
.Tn MBR
partition of the first hard disk known to the
.Tn BIOS
.Po
which is an
.Tn IDE
or similar device - see the
.Sx BUGS
section
.Pc .
.Pp
Pressing a key within the time limit, or before the boot program starts, will
enter interactive mode.
When using a short or 0 timeout, it is often useful to interrupt the boot
by holding down a shift key, as some BIOSes and BIOS extensions will drain the
keystroke buffer at various points during POST.
.Pp
If present, the file /boot.cfg will be used to configure the behaviour of the
boot loader including setting the timeout, choosing a console device, altering
the banner text and displaying a menu allowing boot commands to be easily
chosen. See
.Xr boot.cfg 5 .
.Pp
The
.Nx Ns /i386
boot loader can boot a kernel using either the native
.Nx
boot protocol, or the
.Dq multiboot
protocol (which is compatible with some other operating systems).
In the native
.Nx
boot protocol, options are passed from the boot loader
to the kernel via flag bits in the
.Va boothowto
variable, which is interpreted by the kernel in much the same way
as the
.Va howto
argument passed to the
.Xr reboot 2
system call.
In the multiboot protocol, options are passed from the boot loader
to the kernel as strings.
.Ss Diagnostic Output
If the first stage boot fails to load the boot, it will print a terse
message indicating the reason for the failure.
The possible error messages and their cause are listed in
.Xr mbr 8 .
.Pp
If the first stage boot succeeds, the banner will be shown and the
error messages should be self-explanatory.
.Ss Interactive mode
In interactive mode, the boot loader will present a prompt, allowing
input of these commands:
.\" NOTE: much of this text is duplicated in the MI boot.8.  Some of it is
.\" also duplicated in the i386-specific dosboot.8 and pxeboot.8;
.\" please try to keep all relevant files synchronized.
.Bl -tag -width 04n -offset 04n
.It Xo Ic boot
.Op Va device : Ns
.Op Va filename
.Op Fl 1234abcdmqsvxz
.Xc
The default
.Va device
will be set to the disk that the boot loader was
loaded from.
To boot from an alternate disk, the full name of the device should
be given at the prompt.
.Va device
is of the form
.Xo Va xd
.Op Va N Ns Op Va x
.Xc
where
.Va xd
is the device from which to boot,
.Va N
is the unit number, and
.Va x
is the partition letter.
.Pp
The following list of supported devices may vary from installation to
installation:
.Pp
.Bl -hang -compact
.It hd
Hard disks as numbered by the BIOS. This includes
ST506, IDE, ESDI, RLL disks on a WD100[2367] or
lookalike controller(s), and SCSI disks
on SCSI controllers recognized by the BIOS.
.It fd
Floppy drives as numbered by the BIOS.
.El
.Pp
The default
.Va filename
is
.Pa netbsd ;
if the boot loader fails to successfully
open that image, it then tries
.Pa netbsd.gz
(expected to be a kernel image compressed by gzip), followed by
.Pa netbsd.old ,
.Pa netbsd.old.gz ,
.Pa onetbsd ,
and finally
.Pa onetbsd.gz .
Alternate system images can be loaded by just specifying the name of the image.
.Pp
Options are:
.Bl -tag -width xxx
.It Fl 1
Sets the machine-dependent flag
.Sy RB_MD1
in
.Va boothowto .
In
.Nx Ns /i386 ,
this disables multiprocessor boot;
the kernel will boot in uniprocessor mode.
.It Fl 2
Sets the machine-dependent flag
.Sy RB_MD2
in
.Va boothowto .
In
.Nx Ns /i386 ,
this disables ACPI.
.It Fl 3
Sets the machine-dependent flag
.Sy RB_MD3
in
.Va boothowto .
In
.Nx Ns /i386 ,
this has no effect.
.It Fl 4
Sets the machine-dependent flag
.Sy RB_MD4
in
.Va boothowto .
In
.Nx Ns /i386 ,
this has no effect.
.It Fl a
Sets the
.Sy RB_ASKNAME
flag in
.Va boothowto .
This causes the kernel to prompt for the root file system device,
the system crash dump device, and the path to
.Xr init 8 .
.It Fl b
Sets the
.Sy RB_HALT
flag in
.Va boothowto .
This causes subsequent reboot attempts to halt instead of rebooting.
.It Fl c
Sets the
.Sy RB_USERCONF
flag in
.Va boothowto .
This causes the kernel to enter the
.Xr userconf 4
device configuration manager as soon as possible during the boot.
.Xr userconf 4
allows devices to be enabled or disabled, and allows device locators
(such as hardware addresses or bus numbers)
to be modified before the kernel attempts to attach the devices.
.It Fl d
Sets the
.Sy RB_KDB
flag in
.Va boothowto .
Requests the kernel to enter debug mode, in which it
waits for a connection from a kernel debugger; see
.Xr ddb 4 .
.It Fl m
Sets the
.Sy RB_MINIROOT
flag in
.Va boothowto .
Informs the kernel that a mini-root file system is present in memory.
.It Fl q
Sets the
.Sy AB_QUIET
flag in
.Va boothowto .
Boot the system in quiet mode.
.It Fl s
Sets the
.Sy RB_SINGLE
flag in
.Va boothowto .
Boot the system in single-user mode.
.It Fl v
Sets the
.Sy AB_VERBOSE
flag in
.Va boothowto .
Boot the system in verbose mode.
.It Fl x
Sets the
.Sy AB_DEBUG
flag in
.Va boothowto .
Boot the system with debug messages enabled.
.It Fl z
Sets the
.Sy AB_SILENT
flag in
.Va boothowto .
Boot the system in silent mode.
.El
.It Ic consdev Va dev
Immediately switch the console to the specified device
.Va dev
and reprint the banner.
.Va dev
must be one of
.\" .Bl -item -width com[0123]kbd -offset indent -compact
.Ar pc , com0 , com1 , com2 ,
.Ar com3 , com0kbd , com1kbd , com2kbd ,
.Ar com3kbd ,
or
.Ar auto .
See
.Sx Console Selection Policy
in
.Xr boot_console 8 .
.It Ic dev Op Va device
Set the default drive and partition for subsequent filesystem
operations.
Without an argument, print the current setting.
.Va device
is of the form specified in
.Cm boot .
.It Ic help
Print an overview about commands and arguments.
.It Ic load Va module Op Va arguments
Load the specified kernel
.Va module ,
and pass it the specified
.Va arguments .
If the module name is not an absolute path,
.Pa /stand/ Xo Ns
.Aq Sy arch Ns
.Pa / Ns
.Aq Sy osversion Ns
.Pa /modules/ Ns
.Aq Sy module Ns
.Pa / Ns
.Aq Sy module Ns
.Pa .kmod
.Xc
is used.
Possible used of the
.Ic load
command include loading a memory disk image before booting a kernel,
or loading a Xen DOM0 kernel before booting the Xen hypervisor.
.It Ic ls Op Pa path
Print a directory listing of
.Pa path ,
containing inode number, filename, and file type.
.Pa path
can contain a device specification.
.It Ic multiboot Va kernel Op Va arguments
Boot the specified
.Va kernel ,
using the
.Dq multiboot
protocol instead of the native
.Nx
boot protocol.
The
.Va kernel
is specified in the same way as with the
.Ic boot
command.
.Pp
The multiboot protocol may be used in the following cases:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Nx Ns / Ns  Xen No kernels
The Xen DOM0 kernel must be loaded as a module using the
.Ic load
command, and the Xen hypervisor must be booted using the
.Ic multiboot
command.
Options for the DOM0 kernel (such as
.Dq -s
for single user mode) must be passed as options to the
.Ic load
command.
Options for the hypervisor (such as
.Dq dom0_mem=256M
to reserve 256 MB of memory for DOM0)
must be passed as options to the
.Ic multiboot
command.
See
.Xr boot.cfg 5
for examples of how to boot
.Nx Ns / Ns  Xen.
.It Nx No multiboot kernels
A
.Nx
kernel that was built with
.Cd options MULTIBOOT
(see
.Xr multiboot 8 )
may be booted with either the
.Ic boot
or
.Ic multiboot
command, passing the same arguments in either case.
.It Non- Ns Nx No kernels
A kernel for a
.No non- Ns Nx
operating system that expects to be booted using the
multiboot protocol (such as by the GNU
.Dq GRUB
boot loader)
may be booted using the
.Ic multiboot
command.
See the foreign operating system's documentation for the available arguments.
.El
.It Ic quit
Reboot the system.
.El
.Pp
In an emergency, the bootstrap methods described in the
.Nx
installation notes for the i386 architecture
can be used to boot from floppy or other media,
or over the network.
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /usr/mdec/bootxx_fstype -compact
.It Pa /boot
boot program code loaded by the primary bootstrap
.It Pa /boot.cfg
optional configuration file
.It Pa /netbsd
system code
.It Pa /netbsd.gz
gzip-compressed system code
.It Pa /usr/mdec/boot
master copy of the boot program (copy to /boot)
.It Pa /usr/mdec/bootxx_fstype
primary bootstrap for filesystem type fstype, copied to the start of
the
.Nx
partition by
.Xr installboot 8 .
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr ddb 4 ,
.Xr userconf 4 ,
.Xr boot.cfg 5 ,
.Xr boot_console 8 ,
.Xr dosboot 8 ,
.Xr halt 8 ,
.Xr installboot 8 ,
.Xr mbr 8 ,
.Xr multiboot 8 ,
.Xr pxeboot 8 ,
.Xr reboot 8 ,
.Xr shutdown 8 ,
.Xr w95boot 8
.Sh BUGS
The kernel file name must be specified before, not after, the boot options.
Any
.Ar filename
specified after the boot options, e.g.:
.Pp
.Bd -unfilled -offset indent -compact
.Cm boot -d netbsd.test
.Ed
.Pp
is ignored, and the default kernel is booted.
.Pp
Hard disks are always accessed by
.Tn BIOS
functions.
Unit numbers are
.Tn BIOS
device numbers which might differ from numbering in the
.Nx
kernel or physical parameters
.Po
e.g.,
.Tn SCSI
slave numbers
.Pc .
There isn't any distinction between
.Dq sd
and
.Dq wd
devices at the bootloader level.
This is less a bug of the bootloader code than
a shortcoming of the PC architecture.
The default disk device's name printed in the starting message
is derived from the
.Dq type
field of the
.Nx
disklabel (if it is a hard disk).