jit@SLIC.CELLBIO.DUKE.EDU (Jit Keong Tan) (03/26/91)
Attention UNIX gurus: HI, I have a question about booting up from the hard disk and tapedrive. If the hard disk refuses to boot up, is it possible to boot up from somewhere else such as the tapedrive ? Then proceed to mount the hard disk and salvage the hard drive without booting it. I read the man page on mkboottape(1M) and don't quite understand this line: > Unless you have means to create a stand alone program this utility is > useless. What kind of stand alone program ? Does this mean I have to write a program that runs on its own without any system service from kernel ? If this is what it means, how to load this program that I'll be writing ? Thanks for any helpful hints. -------------------------------------------------------- Jit Keong Tan | internet: jit@slic.cellbio.duke.edu (919) 684-8098 | bitnet : tan00001@dukemc.bitnet -------------------------------------------------------- U.S. Mail: Duke University Medical Center Department Of Cell Biology Box 3709 Nanaline Duke Bldg, Rm. 349 Durham, NC 27710
olson@anchor.esd.sgi.com (Dave Olson) (03/27/91)
In <9103261423.AA02413@slic.cellbio.duke.edu> jit@SLIC.CELLBIO.DUKE.EDU (Jit Keong Tan) writes: | HI, I have a question about booting up from the hard disk and tapedrive. | | If the hard disk refuses to boot up, is it possible to boot | up from somewhere else such as the tapedrive ? Then proceed to | mount the hard disk and salvage the hard drive without booting it. Sure, simply start a normal software installation with your eoe1 boot tape. The first thing it does is copy the miniroot over to your swap partition. After that, use the sh(ell) escape and go to it. If the disk partitions are trashed, then you need to use fx to fix it up. fx.CPUTYPE is also on the same tape. See your owners manual for info on how to boot it up. | I read the man page on mkboottape(1M) and don't quite understand | this line: | > Unless you have means to create a stand alone program this utility is | > useless. mkboottape only puts files onto the tape in a form the boot proms can understand. The comment refers to the fact that SGI provides no way to create your own standalone programs. Using it to create a bootable tape from the files in /stand, etc. will work fine. In one sense, the kernel itself is a standalone program, and you can in fact boot it directly from tape or from the disk volume header (provided your volume header is big enough). -- Dave Olson Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.