ABOOTCONF(8)

NAME
abootconf - Configure the location of the configuration file for the secondary bootloader aboot(8) for Linux/Alpha.

SYNOPSIS

abootconf /dev/xxx num

COPYRIGHT

abootconf is Copyright (C) 1996 Linus Torvalds, David Mosberger-Tang and Michael Schwingen

DESCRIPTIONS

abootconf is used to change the partition the alpha Linux boot loader aboot(8) looks for its configuration file in. The configuration file is stored in etc/aboot.conf(5) relative to the root of the file system in this partition.

abootconf requires the boot device (e.g. /dev/hdb, /dev/sda) and the partition to be used (e.g. 3). Thus if you want to boot from partition E: on your second SCSI disk you would enter

abootconf /dev/sdb 5

NOTES

abootconf is not needed if you are booting your alpha system via milo.

For each disk one partition can be activated to contain the configuration for aboot(8) which is located in etc/aboot.conf(5). The disk chosen to boot from is selected at the SRM prompt as the second argument, e.g.

boot dqa

to boot from your first IDE hard disk. See the HP SRM-Manual and aboot(8) for details.

aboot(8) can load a kernel from an arbitrary partition and can even use a different root partition than the one etc/aboot.conf belongs to. Hence you would usually set up one etc/aboot.conf with all combinations and would not require abootconf except for initial set up. You can then boot the requested Linux kernel by giving the appropriate flags at the SRM prompt, e.g. to boot the entry labeled 2 you would use

boot dqa -fl "2"

See the HP SRM manual and aboot.conf(5) for details.

To show the current setting simply omit the last argument (i.e. the partition number).

Note that you have to rerun abootconf if you updated aboot.

Strictly speaking abootconf is not necessary as you can specify the partition which etc/aboot.conf resides on at the SRM-Prompt by prepending the partition number and a colon in the flags-parameter, i.e. if etc/aboot.conf resided on the fourth partition and you want to boot the entry labeled 2 you could also issue

boot dqa -fl "4:2"

at the SRM prompt.

Note that this applies to Linux only as VMS, Tru64, *BSD and Windows NT each have their own secondary boot loader.

Also note that for initial hard disk setup abootconf is no longer needed as swriteboot(8) contains the entire functionality of abootconf.

AUTHOR

This man page was written by Helge Kreutzmann <kreutzm@itp.uni-hannover.de> for the Debian GNU/Linux project but may be used by others.

FILES

etc/aboot.conf

SEE ALSO

aboot(8), swriteboot(8), aboot.conf(5), HP SRM Manual