AskHL: Saving OpenVMS I64 EFI Console Boot Flags

AskHL: Saving OpenVMS I64 EFI Console Boot Flags

http://64.223.189.234/node/433

Submitted by Hoff on July 23, 2007 - 21:19.

Tagged: AskHL  •   Itanium  •   OpenVMS  •   OpenVMS I64

A question arriving via mail asks for details of performing a conversational (and a debugging) bootstrap on an OpenVMS I64 system, and without using access to the BOOT_OPTIONS.COM command procedure. This because OpenVMS itself is not bootstrapping. Conversational bootstraps are fully available, as are various useful diagnostic-related bootstrap flags.
With OpenVMS I64 running, you could invoke SYS$UPDATE:BOOT_OPTIONS.COM to gain access to the boot flags. But if OpenVMS is not bootstrapping, that is not an option.

At the EFI Shell prompt, you can invoke the following:
fs?unit?:/efi/vms/vms_loader.efi -flags 0,1
Details on locating the ?unit? value for your particular configuration are available in OpenVMS Tips: Conversational Bootstraps; Resetting SYSTEM Password? topic. At its simplest, you issue Shell commands dir fs0:/efi/vms/, then dir fs1:/efi/vms/, then dir fs2:/efi/vms/, etc, until you find the boot partition on the device that you want to use.

You can also set flags via the boot alias entry mechanism, potentially setting up a mechanism akin to the ancient VAX GENBOO mechanisms. When prompted for the character set (ASCII or Unicode) while entering the alias entry at the EFI menu prompt, select Unicode. When prompted for the options, enter -flags 0,1, or whatever would have been entered as a parameter on the vms_loader invocation.

Here are various of the bootstrap flags available for the IPB primary bootstrap and for the SYSBOOT secondary bootstrap image; for the remainder of the OpenVMS I64 bootstrap:

Bit Number	Flags (bitmask) Spec	Requested Operation
0	-flags 0,1	CONV: Conversational Bootstrap
1	-flags 0,2	DEBUG: Load SYSTEM_DEBUG.EXE (XDELTA)
2	-flags 0,4	INIBPT: Stop at the initial system (XDELTA) breakpoint
16	-flags 0,10000	DBG_INIT: Enable verbose-mode bootstrap messages
17	-flags 0,20000	USER_MSGS: Enable yet more bootstrap messages
21	-flags 0,200000	USB Keydisk Bootstrap

For related information, see OpenVMS Tips: Conversational Bootstraps; Resetting SYSTEM Password? and OpenVMS Tips: Conversational Bootstraps and SYSBOOT, as well as various other topics referenced from these.

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