Boot device paths on an E3500 (Sun Enterprise[TM] 3500)

Understanding full physical paths on an E3500 in relation to the onboard disk drives is important when selecting a boot device.

There are four ports on the interface board (IB) labeled top to bottom:

UB, UA, LB, LA

To get to these ports you must come off either:

• an I/O board onboard FCAL port, or
• an Sbus FCAL port

The full physical address describes:

• whether you are using the I/O board onboard ports or the Sbus HBA ports
• which port (0 or 1) on the onboard or Sbus HBA
• which IB board port (A or B) you are using

NOTE: The address does not indicate whether the drives are upper or lower drives.

The upper drives and the lower drives act as two separate arrays.

Use the "probe-fcal-all" command and the disk World-Wide Number (WWN) to determine which array (top or bottom) your disk is on.

The following is a breakdown of a complete physical path:

/sbus@A,0/SUNW,socal@B,10000/sf@C,0/ssd@w2DEEEEEEEEEEEEEE,F:G

"A"--------------------- "B"---------------- "C"--------------- "D"-----------------------------------------"E"------------ "F" ---------------------"G"

convert to decimal ----0=sbus slot0 ------1=top gbic------- w21=UA/LA, w22=UB/LB --------------disk wwn -----lun (always "0") -------slice

divide by 2 to get -----1=sbus slot1-------onboard/sbus

the I/O slot# -----------2=sbus slot2 ------0=bottom gbic

--------------------------d=sbus slotd ------onboard/sbus

--------------------------(onboard)

======= identifies which port on the host ========

---------------------------------------------------------------= identifies where the cables plug =======

---------------------------------------------------------------= onto the interface board (W21=UA/LA,=

---------------------------------------------------------------= W22=UB/LB), but does NOT identify==

---------------------------------------------------------------= whether the top or bottom drives. =====

---------------------------------------------------------------= (top/bottom are 2 separate arrays =====

---------------------------------------------------------------= see "E", "F" and "G" for this info) ====

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------= identifies the drive, lun and slice ===

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------= use "probe-fcal-all" to identify =====

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------= if drive is on top or bottom array ===

Using the above information you should be able to make an alias to boot from any internal drive as follows:

1. Select an alias name: <myinternaldisk>.

2. Type the following at the ok> prompt:

ok> nvalias <myinternaldisk> /sbus@A,0/SUNW,socal@B,10000/sf@C,0/ssd@w2DEEEEEEEEEEEEEE,F:G                       

(Use the above example to fill in numbers for A, B, C, D, E ,F, and G).

3. Copy the contents of the command into nvramrc:

ok> nvstore                       

4. Add the alias to the boot device list.

ok> setenv boot-device <myinternaldisk> [disk] [net]                       

5. Reset the system.

ok> reset                       

6. Boot the server. You will not need this step if auto-boot? is set to true.

ok> boot                       

Keywords: nvalias, e3500, boot, device, path

Internal Summary

remo.allison@sun.com