Chapter 8. Shutting Down and Booting a System (Overview)

Table of Contents

What's New in Shutting Down and Booting a System
Changes to GRUB Failsafe Interaction
GRUB Based Booting
Where to Find Shut Down and Boot Tasks
Shut Down and Boot Terminology
Guidelines for Shutting Down a System
Guidelines for Booting a System
When to Shut Down a System
When to Boot a System
Booting a System From the Network
Systems Booting From PXE, CD, or DVD Now Boot Automatically
PXE Network Boot
Support for 64-Bit Computing
Setting the boot-file Parameter With the eeprom Command
Booting a System With the Kernel Debugger (kmdb)

What's New in Shutting Down and Booting a System

This section describes new boot features in this Solaris release. For a complete listing of new Solaris features and a description of Solaris releases, see What’s New in Solaris Express .

For information about new features for shutting down and booting a system in the Solaris 10 release, see the following references:

  • SMF and Booting

  • Support for 64-Bit Computing

  • Systems Booting From PXE, CD, or DVD Now Boot Automatically

Changes to GRUB Failsafe Interaction

Solaris Express 3/06: In this Solaris release, the GRUB failsafe interaction has changed. Previously, if you booted the failsafe archive, you were prompted to automatically update the boot archives, regardless of whether any boot archives were out-of-date. Starting with the Solaris Express 3/06 release, the system only prompts you to update the boot archives if out-of-date boot archives are detected. For an example of the GRUB failsafe interaction in the current Solaris release, see How to Boot the Failsafe Archive for Recovery Purposes.

GRUB Based Booting

Solaris Express 6/05: The open source GRand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) has been adopted as the default boot loader on x86 based systems. GRUB is responsible for loading a boot archive into the system's memory. A boot archive is a collection of critical files that is needed during system startup before the root (/) file system is mounted. The boot archive is used to boot the Solaris OS. You can find more information about GRUB at . See also the grub ( 5 ) man page.

Note

GRUB based booting is not available on SPARC based systems in this Solaris release.

The most notable change is the replacement of the Solaris Device Configuration Assistant with the GRUB menu. The GRUB menu is displayed when you boot an x86 based system. This menu facilitates the boot, you can select which OS instance to boot. If you do not make a selection, the default OS instance is booted.

GRUB Based Booting provides the following improvements:

  • Faster boot times

  • Installation capability from USB CD and DVD drives

  • Ability to boot from USB storage devices

  • Simplified DHCP setup for PXE boot (no vendor-specific options)

  • Elimination of all realmode drivers

In addition, two new administrative commands have been added to assist you in managing system bootability.

  • bootadm – Rebuilds the boot_archive

  • installgrub – Installs the GRUB boot blocks

For more information, see the bootadm ( 1M ) and the installgrub ( 1M ) man pages. For overview, task, and reference information, see Chapter 11, GRUB Based Booting (Tasks).

For installation information, see the Solaris Express Installation Guide: Network-Based Installations and the Solaris Express Installation Guide: Custom JumpStart and Advanced Installations .