Hello list -
I've been building some of my newer Red Hat 5.4 zLInux images using FCP
devices for the boot device. I noticed yesterday, however, that when I
IPL an machine (through VM) that I'm not offered a boot menu. This went
unnoticed because we haven't had to revert to old kernels or reach
single user mode, but this might be a problem in the future.
I see in the doc from a 'man zipl.conf' command this:
Boot menu
The zipl tool provides a boot menu function which enables users
to choose a boot con-
figuration and to modify the kernel command line parameters at
IPL time (only available
for DASD disk devices).
Am I reading that right? "Only for DASD disk devices"? Does this
mean that I have no alternative and no means to build a boot menu?
For those who want more details, read on:
I've been checking that my /etc/zipl.conf is correct, I've run zipl, all
looks good. Here's that output:
[r...@srpwmq31 boot]# zipl -V
Using config file '/etc/zipl.conf'
Target device information
Device..........................: 08:00
Partition.......................: 08:01
Device name.....................: sda
Device driver name..............: sd
Type............................: disk partition
Disk layout.....................: SCSI disk layout
Geometry - heads................: 64
Geometry - sectors..............: 32
Geometry - cylinders............: 8631
Geometry - start................: 63
File system block size..........: 1024
Physical block size.............: 512
Device size in physical blocks..: 530082
Building bootmap in '/boot'
Building menu 'menu1'
Adding #1: IPL section '2.6.18-164.' (default)
kernel image......: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-164.el5
kernel parmline...: 'root=/dev/vg00/root'
initial ramdisk...: /boot/initrd-2.6.18-164.el5.img
component address:
kernel image....: 0x00010000-0x005afdff
parmline........: 0x00001000-0x000011ff
initial ramdisk.: 0x00800000-0x00f26fff
internal loader.: 0x0000a000-0x0000a3ff
Preparing boot device: sda.
Detected SCSI PCBIOS disk layout.
Writing SCSI master boot record.
Syncing disks...
Done.
When I ipl the system:
#CP I devaddr
Or
#CP I devaddr loadparm prompt
It never displays the boot menu, it just launches into boot presumably
from the one image on the FCP device.
Tim
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