BIOS Diagnostic NVRAM OpenBoot PROM Solaris Sun OpenBoot PROM, BIOS Management Introduction The PROM is the equivalent of the BIOS or EFI on a standard x86 system.
Approach To know your PROM version:
` uname -m` /sbin/prtdiag -v
or
NVRAM The NVRAM can be modified by a user to change some options on the machine:
Once the NVRAM is stored on the chipset, during the PROM call at boot, it will check the user's preferences at the NVRAM level in order to apply them.
Diagnostic To enter Diagnostic mode, press: Stop+D
To stop an ongoing diagnostic: Stop+A
Disabling Keyboard Use If you want to disable the keyboard at boot, edit the file /etc/default/kbd and uncomment this line:
Save, exit and run this command:
After doing this, you'll only have access to the Stop+A key sequence.
PROM Commands I intentionally left the descriptions in English to avoid translation errors:
Command Description banner Displays the power-on banner boot Boots the system help Lists the main help categories printenv Displays all parameters' current and default values setenv Sets the specified NVRAM parameter to some value reset-all Resets the entire system; similar to a power cycle set-defaults Resets all parameter values to the factory defaults sifting text Displays the FORTH commands containing text .registers Displays the contents of the registers probe-scsi Identifies the devices on the internal Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) bus probe-scsi-all Identifies the devices on all SCSI buses probe-ide Identifies devices on the internal integrated device electronics (IDE) bus probe-fcal-all Identifies devices on all Fibre Channel loops show-devs Displays the entire device tree devalias Identifies the current boot device alias for the system nvalias Creates a new device alias name nvunalias Removes a device alias name show-disks Displays and allows a selection of device paths for the disks to be used for nvalias sync Manually attempts to flush memory and synchronize file systems test Runs self-tests on specified devices
Banner
Boot This provides an interactive mode:
Help Here's the help command:
Here are some examples:
printenv This command lists all NVRAM preferences:
To display only one parameter:
Setenv If the autoboot parameter is set to true, the system will boot automatically, otherwise you'll get a prompt:
To turn off the machine, empty the buffers and registers, use this command:
Set-defaults To reset all parameters to default values, use this command:
To reset only one parameter (here diag-level):
Probe To find all available probe commands:
If portions of Solaris OS were in RAM when the system was suspended, the probe command could shut down the machine. To avoid this:
Otherwise you can use .registers:
Check that all values are at 0, otherwise the system may shut down.
Probe-scsi For a SCSI device, use this command:
Probe-scsi-all Same but for all SCSI devices:
Probe-ide For IDE devices:
Show-dev To list all devices:
Devalias To identify boot devices:
To boot with the devices above:
nvalias To create an alias for an existing device:
To put this alias in NVRAM:
Here's an example:
To copy the selected path, press Ctrl+Y, then add the LUN (Logical Unit Number) of the disk:
To add the boot to this new alias:
nvualias To remove an alias:
Example:
Then use this command to see the parameters:
eeprom To list all parameters with their values:
To list only one value:
To change the value of a command:
Synchronize the PROM To synchronize the PROM if the system is not responding, for example:
November 29, 2006 November 29, 2006 