Booting From an Alternate Device

There are times when you will need to boot from a device other than the device that you normally boot from. For example, if your primary boot disk fails, you will need to boot your system either from a different disk or from a recovery tape.

Take control of the boot process so that autoboot/autosearch will not attempt to boot the system automatically from your primary boot device:
Server Systems. If the autoboot and autosearch flags are enabled, PDC will provide you with a 10 second delay in which to manually override the automatic boot process. Press any key during these 10 seconds.
PDC will ask you:
Boot from primary boot path (Y or N)?
Answer no:
Boot from primary boot path (Y or N)? N
PDC will then ask you:
Boot from alternate boot path (Y or N)?
If the alternate boot path is the correct hardware path for the device that you want to boot from, enter Y. If, as in the is example, the alternate boot path is not the desired hardware path, answer N:
Boot from alternate boot path (Y or N)? N
You will then be prompted to enter a command:
Enter boot path, command, or ?>
V-Class Servers. If the autoboot and autosearch flags are enabled, the boot process will provide you with a 10 second delay in which to manually override an automatic boot. Press any key during these 10 seconds.
Workstations. As the system is booting, press the ESC (escape) key to stop the automatic boot process.
Specify the hardware path name of the device that you want to boot from:
Server Systems. Enter the command:
Enter boot path, command, or ?> boot hardware_path
Where hardware_path is the hardware path to the device that you want to boot from.
You will then be asked:
Interact with IPL (Y or N)?
If you are booting from the standard kernel file name (/stand/vmunix) and do not need to boot to single-user mode or LVM maintenance mode, you do not need to interact with IPL (ISL). Answer N.
If you need to specify a different kernel name, or boot into a special mode, you do need to interact with ISL. Answer Y.
NOTE: IPL in the system prompt above refers to the Initial Program Loader, which is ISL.
Interact with IPL (Y or N)? Y
ISL>
V-Class Servers. Enter the command:
command: boot hardware_path
Where hardware_path is the hardware path to the device that you want to boot from. If the alternate boot path listed on the system console represents the device/path that you want to boot from, hardware_path can be specified as “ALT”:
command: boot alt
Workstations. On HP 9000 workstations, once PDC has finished loading ISL, instead of executing commands from the autoexecute file, ISL will prompt you to manually enter a command:
b) Boot from a specified device
s) Search for bootable devices
a) Enter Boot Administration modex) Exit and continue boot sequence?) HelpSelect from menu:
If you enter s at the menu prompt, the system will now (re)display the list of places you can boot from. At this point you may have a number of options:
- Specify that you want to boot from the address defined as the alternate boot path:
  Select from menu: b alt
- Specify the boot selection number (P0, ..., Pn) as the argument to the boot command. For example:
  Select from menu: b P3
- Specify a specific disk device to boot from as the argument to the boot command. For example:
  Select from menu: b scsi.4
- Specify a the lan address of another computer in your local network segment to boot from. For example:
  Select from menu: b lan.123456-789ABC.3.6

Booting From an Alternate Device

Technical documentation

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