.\" sdisklabel - Write secondary SRM bootloader to harddisk
.TH swriteboot 8 "17 January 1995" "David Mosberger" ""
.SH NAME
swriteboot \- Write secondary SRM bootloader to harddisk.
.SH SYNOPSIS
\fBswriteboot\fP [-v] [-f#] <dev> <bootloader> [kernel]
.SH DESCRIPTION

\fBswriteboot\fP can be used to write a secondary bootstrap loader
and - optionally - a kernel to
a harddisk.  The loader is written in a way that allows the SRM
firmware to boot from that disk (SRM is the firmware that is also used
to boot \fBHP Tru64\fP, \fBOpenVMS\fP and *BSD).
Specifically, the loader is written to occupy
a physically contiguous range of sectors starting at sector 2 and the
first sector is updated such that the SRM firmware can find the boot
loader.  \fBswriteboot\fP may fail if the bootstrap loader is too big
to fit into the sectors reserved for boot purposes.  It is therefore
suggested to reserve the first 512 sectors of a harddisk for boot
purposes.  This will leave 256 kB of space for a secondary bootstrap
loader which should be plenty (currently, the \fBaboot\fP(8) bootstrap
loader is about 90 kB large). Use more if you want to have a kernel in this
area, too - 2 MB should be sufficient in this case.

.P
The \fI<dev>\fP argument specifies the special device to which the
\fI<bootloader>\fP file should be written to.  The boot loader file
must be a header-less image (not an object file) containing the raw
contents of the text, data, and bss sections.  A typical command to
make SCSI disk 0 bootable with the \fIaboot\fP(8) loader is shown
below:

.I "swriteboot /dev/sda bootlx"

.P
The \fI-v\fP option makes \fBswriteboot\fP be a bit more verbose.
.P
The \fI-f#\fP option tells \fBswriteboot\fP to ignore an overlap of the boot area with
partition \fI#\fP.
.P
The \fI-c#\fP option explicitly tells \fBswriteboot\fP the boot partition.
If this argument is missing, then \fBswriteboot\fP tries to autodetect the
boot partition if possible. Note that you can set the boot partition later
on with \fBabootconf\fP(8) as well.

.nf
.SH SEE ALSO
.IR aboot (8) ,
.IR abootconf (8) ,
.IR mke2fs (8) ,
.IR e2writeboot (8)
.nf
.SH AUTHORS
.nf
Bob Manson <manson@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Michael Schwingen <michael@schwingen.org>
Helge Kreutzmann <debian@helgefjell.de> (Update of man page)
.fi