Background

The following is a bullet list of topics I'll cover in this chapter:

• An overview of the boot process.

• Boot Control Handler (BCH) and Processor Dependent Code (PDC.)

• Initial System Load (ISL).

• Secondary System Load (hpux.)

• Consoles (Local, Remote, LAN, and Secure Web Console.)

• Secure Web Console.

• Guardian Service Processor (GSP.)

• Booting and boot states of Virtual Partitions (vPars.)

• Introduction to the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) on Itanium-based systems.

• There is a tear-out card included with the book with a lot of useful boot and firmware- related information.

• There are some man pages related to boot in Appendix A.

As you can see from the list there is a lot to cover related to booting in HP-UX systems. In the first few sections of this chapter, I want to give you an overview of the low-level boot and configuration of an HP system, setting up HP Secure Web Console, and then configuring the Guardian Service Processor (GSP). You might perform these in the opposite order in which I present them. I chose to cover boot first, however, because it is an area of much confusion for new system administrators. Not everyone has a Secure Web Console, so I decided to cover this second. Securing your Guardian Service Processor can be done after the system boots, so I cover this third. The next topic covered is booting Virtual Partitions (vPars). Since partitions in general, both vPars and hard partitions (nPartitions), have become a more important part of an HP-UX 11i environment, It is importanto cover booting partitions.

There is an excellent tear-out card that you can use as a quick reference for many boot-related commands. There is a lot to know related to boot and working with partitions, covered later in this book, that the quick reference card summarizes nicely .

The system used In the examples in this chapter is an rp54xx system. I intentionally used a simple system so we could concentrate on the boot process with a minimum amount of hardware-related messages. Reviewing the boot process in this chapter won't make you an HP Customer Engineer (CE) or take the place of any formal training; however, knowing a little of what is going on "pre-operating system" may be helpful. In addition, if you are an experienced UNIX system administrator but haven't before used an HP system, these sections will serve as an introduction to booting a system. Since booting varies from system to system, even within the HP system family, this is not a comprehensive study, but rather an overview.

There is a section at the end of this chapter introducing Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI). EFI is used on Itanium-based systems. It sits between the firmware for the IPF system and the operating system loader. The introduction to EFI is worth taking a look at even if you are using only Precision Architecture-based systems at this time. EFI is an addition to the boot process on IPF systems that you'll get a feel for in the introduction at the end of this chapter.