BOOT PROCESS

Power on the Server

1. POST Power on Self Test, Checks the Minimal Hardware availability for booting up
2. POST Look at boot list, locate the bootable device
3. Locate bootstrap code or so called system ROS (Read Only Storage)
4. System ROS is then transferred to the RAM which is so called as software ROS
5. Software ROS will locate the BLV (Boot Logical Volume) contains only one LP
6.
AIX KERNEL

RC.BOOT

REDUCED
ODM

BOOT
COMMANDS

7. rc.boot 1 (CONFIGURE BASE DEVICES)

8. First phase of rc.boot, the base devices that are required to activate the rootvg are
configured
9. First phase checks the Hard Disks that contain rootvg, disk controller, the hardware
that connects the rootvg HD to the motherboard.
10. First phase runs the command cfgmgr f, which configures the phase 1 config rules.
11. The activation will be done till the last bootable device with the command bootinfob
12. At the end of the rc.boot 1 the base devices that are needed for the rootvg activation
are configured and the control has been given to PHASE 2
13. rc.boot 2(ACTIVATE ROOTVG)
14. IPL_VARYON try to vary on the rootvg
15. fsck fp /dev/hd4

555, mount /dev/hd4 and mount /

557

16. fsck -fp /usr mount /usr

518

17. fsck fp /var, mount /var

518

18. copycore this will copy the core dump if anything presents

19. umount /var

20. If no need of dump, then swap on the primary paging device.
21. SAVEBASE- saves information from the base-customized devices to the
dev.config.db
22. mergedev to copy RAM Filesystem to the disk filesystem
23.alog started
24.rc.boot 3(FINAL PHASE)
25.fsck fp /tmp , mount /tmp
26.syncvg v rootvg
27. configures the rest of the devise with the config_rules
28. cfgmgr p1 or p2
29. INIT Process started
30. As per the runlevel, the processes have been started

System Management Concepts:

Operating System and Devices
Understanding System Boot Processing
Most users perform a hard disk boot when starting the system for general operations. The
system finds all information necessary to the boot process on its disk drive.
When the system is started by turning on the power switch (a cold boot) or restarted with
the reboot or shutdown commands (a warm boot), a number of events must occur before
the system is ready for use. These events can be divided into the following phases:
1. Read Only Storage (ROS) Kernel Init Phase
2. Base Device Configuration Phase
3. Maintenance Boot Phase.

ROS Kernel Init Phase

The ROS kernel resides in firmware. Its initialization phase involves the following steps:
1. The firmware checks to see if there are any problems with the system
motherboard. Control is passed to ROS, which performs a power-on self-test
(POST).
2. The ROS initial program load (IPL) checks the user boot list, a list of available
boot devices. This boot list can be altered to suit your requirements using the
bootlist command. If the user boot list in non-volatile random access memory
(NVRAM) is not valid or if a valid boot device is not found, the default boot list
is then checked. In either case, the first valid boot device found in the boot list is
used for system startup. If a valid user boot list exists in NVRAM, the devices in
the list are checked in order. If no user boot list exists, all adapters and devices on
the bus are checked. In either case, devices are checked in a continuous loop until
a valid boot device is found for system startup.
Note:
The system maintains a default boot list located in ROS and a user boot list stored
in NVRAM, for a normal boot. Separate default and user boot lists are also
maintained for booting from the Service key position.
3. When a valid boot device is found, the first record or program sector number
(PSN) is checked. If it is a valid boot record, it is read into memory and is added
to the IPL control block in memory. Included in the key boot record data are the
starting location of the boot image on the boot device, the length of the boot
image, and instructions on where to load the boot image in memory.
4. The boot image is read sequentially from the boot device into memory starting at
the location specified in NVRAM. The disk boot image consists of the kernel, a
RAM file system, and base customized device information.
5. Control is passed to the kernel, which begins system initialization.
6. The kernel runs init, which runs phase 1 of the rc.boot script.
When the kernel initialization phase is completed, base device configuration begins.

Base Device Configuration Phase

The init process starts the rc.boot script. Phase 1 of the rc.boot script performs the base
device configuration, and it includes the following steps:
1. The boot script calls the restbase program to build the customized Object Data
Manager (ODM) database in the RAM file system from the compressed
customized data.
2. The boot script starts the configuration manager, which accesses phase 1 ODM
configuration rules to configure the base devices.
3. The configuration manager starts the sys, bus, disk, SCSI, and the Logical
Volume Manager (LVM) and rootvg volume group configuration methods.

4. The configuration methods load the device drivers, create special files, and update
the customized data in the ODM database.

System Boot Phase

The System Boot Phase involved the following steps:
1. The init process starts phase 2 running of the rc.boot script. Phase 2 of rc.boot
includes the following steps:
a. Call the ipl_varyon program to vary on the rootvg volume group.
b. Mount the hard disk file systems onto their normal mount points.
c. Run the swapon program to start paging.
d. Copy the customized data from the ODM database in the RAM file system
to the ODM database in the hard disk file system.
e. Exit the rc.boot script.
2. After phase 2 of rc.boot, the boot process switches from the RAM file system to
the hard disk root file system.
3. Then the init process runs the processes defined by records in the /etc/inittab file.
One of the instructions in the /etc/inittab file runs phase 3 of the rc.boot script,
which includes the following steps:
a. Mount the /tmp hard disk file system.
b. Start the configuration manager phase 2 to configure all remaining
devices.
c. Use the savebase command to save the customized data to the boot logical
volume
d. Exit the rc.boot script.
At the end of this process, the system is up and ready for use.