Changing the Default Boot Device

To boot from the default boot device (usually the primary hard drive), you would enter the following:

 ok boot 

However, it is also possible to boot using the CDROM by using this command:

 ok boot cdrom 

The system may be booted from a host on the network by using this command:

 ok boot net 

Alternatively, if you have a boot floppy, the following command may be used:

 ok boot floppy 

Because many early Solaris distributions were made on magnetic tape, it s also possible to boot using a tape drive with the following command:

 ok boot tape 

Instead of specifying a different boot device each time you want to reboot, it is possible to set an environment variable within the OpenBoot monitor, so that a specific device is booted by default. For example, to set the default boot device to be the primary hard disk, you would use the following command:

 ok setenv boot-device disk boot-device = disk 

To verify that the boot device has been set correctly to disk, the following command can be used:

 ok printenv boot-device boot-device disk 

In order to reset the system, to use the new settings, you simply use the reset command:

 ok reset 

To set the default boot device to be the primary network device, you would use the following command:

 ok setenv boot-device net boot-device = net 

This configuration is commonly used for diskless clients , such as Sun Rays, which use RARP and NFS to boot across the network. To verify that the boot device has been set correctly to net, the following command can be used:

 ok printenv boot-device boot-device net disk 

To set the default boot device to be the primary CD-ROM device, you would use the following command:

 ok setenv boot-device cdrom boot-device = cdrom 

To verify that the boot device has been set correctly to cdrom, the following command can be used:

 ok printenv boot-device boot-device cdrom disk 

To set the default boot device to be the primary floppy drive, you would use the following command:

 ok setenv boot-device floppy boot-device = floppy 

To verify that the boot device has been set correctly to floppy, the following command can be used:

 ok printenv boot-device boot-device floppy disk 

To set the default boot device to be the primary tape drive, you would use the following command:

 ok setenv boot-device tape boot-device = tape 

To verify that the boot device has been set correctly to tape, the following command can be used:

 ok printenv boot-device boot-device tape disk