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In this Document

Goal

Solution

ON THE MAIN SYSTEM CONTROLLER

References

Applies to:

Goal

If you follow the instructions below you should be able to "boot net" a domain from the SC's dvdrom drive.

You can configure this to boot over the private network, known as the man network, also known as the I1 network,  or you can use the public network for the domain.

The man network uses only 100 half duplex,  but having no other traffic on this network, works relatively well for booting.

Solution

Below is a process to assist the user in booting off the System controller's DVDrom drive.

The domain will access this drive via the internal "man" net or maintenance network.

ON THE MAIN SYSTEM CONTROLLER

run a "showfailover -r" to verify you are on the MAIN SC,

example:

Next check the /etc/ethers file to make sure you are using the MAC from the "banner" command (ON THE DOMAIN).
This is important , because if you use another MAC you will be able to resolve the name to IP, but at some point during the boot it will fail.

example:

Next check the /etc/hosts file and /etc/inet/hosts and make sure that the hostname for the domain is in BOTH files , and that the domain has the same name.  The /etc/inet/hosts is a linked file to /etc/hosts, so, you are just making sure the link is still there.

example:

Next go to the /etc/inetd.conf and look to see that the following line is uncommented.  If this is commented out or missing, the tftp packs will not be downloaded.  Part of the add_install_client script does this, but if the SC was configured to boot the domain and then someone commented this out for some reason, the boot will fail.

The tftp service is now enabled and available.

You can enable using:

Next check the /etc/bootparams file.  The domain may have a boot path in this file.  If there is and it is the wrong Operating System or the wrong path to the image or cdrom, then there is a chance the boot will fail.  In most cases the best thing to do is to (and it takes very little time) remove the install client.  As root, "cd" to the appropriate "Tools" directory on the cdrom or the image and run the following command.  This will remove the necessary file entries for this domain to allow the add_install_client to execute properly.  This command has to be run from the "Tools" directory of the media that is going to be used for the boot.

example:

Lets take a look at the bootparams file for a moment, this file can appear confusing when the man network is being used for the network boot.  For example, when you run the command:

This would create the section...

...in the /etc/bootparams file, on the system controller, which you run this command from.

ON THE DOMAIN

When you are at the "ok prompt", run a printenv command and check to see if the variable local-mac-address? is set to false.  If it is set to true, you need to change it to false, using the "setenv" command.  You can change this back later, once the "boot net" exercise is completed.

example:

Now check the path to the boot server.  At the "ok prompt" on the domain, run the command "devalias".  This will show you the paths that you are using to get to the boot server.

example:

If you need to change the path just run the show-nets command.  If you are going to use another interface for the public network like qfe0, you need to use another alias other than "net," like "Net1" or "pubnet" or  anything else besides "net":

example:

After there are any changes made, you will have to run the reset command to get them to take effect.

example:

Now that you have created the install_client on the System Controller for the domain, the command from the domain's console would would be:

This will boot you into single user over the "man" network.  If you want to do an interactive install, leave off the -s .  Remember that if the /etc/ethers file is not setup for the private network alias name, the boot over the man network will fail.

When the add_install_client script runs, some of the many tasks it performs is to:

start rarpd
start bootparmd
share out the image

However, the script only checks to see if "cdrom" is in the /etc/dfs/dfstab.  So, for instance if you had the information in the dfstab file example below, but you were trying to boot to /cdrom/sol_8_204_sparc/s0 , it would not share it out.

example:

To ensure it shares the location, do the following:

Now you should be able to boot from the cdrom/dvd drive.

This document was taken from the 15K bootnet cookbook, the internal site no longer exists

References

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