[Sunhelp] Can't open boot device?????? (Help)

[morgan.g]

Hi,

The problem is quite simple yet complicated. If you have already solved the 
problem, good, anyway, here are some information that you could usein the 
future.

I assume that you are at the ok prompt...because you can't boot right!

1. First of all, figure out your boot disk, if you have many disks, there's 
a few way of doing this

First method
==========
boot from cdrom(2.6 OS) in single user:
ok boot cdrom -s

once you're in, do a format to check what are the disks that are available. 
mount each disk to /a until you find the boot disk.
example:

# mount /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /a
# cd /a
# more etc/vfstab
If you see a vfstab in this disk, probably this is the boot disk, but 
anyway, look into the vfstab entry to see if you have made any mistakes, 
like wrong device path etc...

If everything is ok, do this :
# cd /a/dev/dsk
# ls -l c0t0d0s0 (if this the boot disk)
what you'll get is the full boot path, take note of the last 2 directories, 
especially, the one that says(eg..  /sd at 0,0:a)

#halt the system(drop back to ok prompt )

ok printenv
(look under boot-device  to see what is the boot disk you have specified, 
always take the first column, the second column just tells you what the 
default should be)
Let's say it is called "disk"

ok devalias
(look to see if you have any device alias pointing to disk)
if there is an entry for disk, check to see if the path is correct(taken 
from the last 2 directories i asked you to copy down)
if it is right, the disk MUST boot, if it doesn't do this:
ok probe-scsi-all
this will show you all the scsi devices available..including the path. If 
the disk is not showing, then probably it's a scsi disk error...I can't help 
you!

Now going back to devalias output:
i) if there's no alias for disk, look at other aliases (disk1 disk2, 
whatever) to see if there is a matching path in there, if there is a 
different alais then disk, maybe disk2 is there with the correct path, 
simply do this:
ok setenv boot-device disk2

ii) if you can't see your path anywhere in the alias, do this:

ok show-disks

this will give you a few options to choose from, basically the path to 
disks:
Choose the option that fits your device path (can get from probe-scsi-all as 
well)
Let's assume you choose option "b"
do this now:
ok  nvalias newdisk (press CTRL SHIFT y, this will paste the path for you 
but not fully..so you have to append the rest like this....type in the disk 
path i told you to copy eg. sd at 0,0:a)

this will create a new alias for you called newdisk(you get to choose the 
name) it's not over yet, do this:

ok nvstore (this stores the new value)
ok setenv boot-device newdisk (tell the system that this is your boot path)
ok boot

Second Method
============

Do this if you don't want to boot through cdrom and want to solve the 
problem by guessing???

ok probe-scsi-all
This will show you all the internal disks, note down the disks, paying 
attention to the paths and target number:
normally target 1 is sd at 1, target 3 is sd at 3, so on and so forth.

ok devalias

As said earlier, use nvalias command to make an alias for all the disks you 
have: (except for target 6 which is normally the cdrom) also please check to 
see that your disks are not using target 7, which is normally the 
SCSI-Intiator ID...this has the highest priority, target 4 and 5 are 
normally used by tape devices.

ex. disk disk1 disk2 disk3.....

ok nvstore

Try one by one now:

ok boot disk
ok boot disk1
ok boot disk2 .....etc etc

If all these still doesn't work send me mail with all the details....at 
mgg40 at amdahl.com


cheers

Morgan.G


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