Chapter 8. Booting Your Machine and Post-Installation Setup

Alpha and SRM: Post-Installation Boot Setup

Once the installation has been completed, your machine should be capable of booting in SRM directly from the hard drive, using a command like the following:

>>> boot dka0 -fl 0

In this example, dka0 is the device on which the root partition, / (or the /boot partition if it exists) resides (the SRM device on which you installed the aboot secondary boot loader).

If the previous command is problematic for your machine, the format of the command for booting from SRM is as follows:

>>> boot <device> -file <boot file> -flags "<boot flags>"

In the above command, <boot device> is the SRM device on which the aboot secondary boot loader is installed. <boot file> is the uncompressed kernel file that you installed. You should have noted these values during the installation process, as described in the section called Alpha and SRM: Note the Kernel Filename and Partition Number in Chapter 6. You'll need to preface the kernel filename with the number of the partition where the kernel resides, and include the full path to the kernel.

Also in the above command, <boot flags> are the root device (the device mounted as /) and any other kernel flags that you need to pass.

For example, if you installed aboot on the first SCSI device on the second SCSI bus (dkb0), the root of your Linux filesystem is the third partition of your first SCSI drive (/dev/sda3), and you installed version 2.2.13-0.9 of the Linux kernel on a uni-processor machine, then the boot command to boot your Alpha is:

>>> boot dkb0 -file 3/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.13-0.9
-flags "root=/dev/sda3"

SRM Console Variables

You should set the bootdef_dev and boot_osflags console variables with the following commands:

>>> set bootdef_dev dka0
>>> set boot_osflags 0
>>> unset boot_file

You can also set the SRM console to autoboot with the value of the auto_action SRM console variable. auto_action can be set to HALT or BOOT to reflect the default power-on function of the Alpha machine when booted into the SRM console.

	Please Note
	When setting the value of the auto_action SRM console variable, note that your machine will not be able to return to the SRM console unless you press the HALT button on the machine. Most desktop Alpha machines do not have a HALT button, so you should only set the auto_action value to BOOT if the Alpha machine is a high-availability server that has a HALT button on the front panel.

If you want to set your SRM console variables to automatically boot, use the following commands:

>>> set auto_action BOOT