Managing Superdome Complexes: A Guide for HP-UX System Administrators

Booting and Resetting Superdome Partitions
Overview of Partition Booting Concepts and Issues
Chapter 5 233
3. Power-On Self Test (POST)
Cells and other system components go through self-test (POST)
activities.
4. Boot-Is-Blocked (BIB) or Partition Rendezvous
Each cell whose use-on-next-boot value is “n” (do not use) remains at
boot-is-blocked and does not proceed to rendezvous with the other
cells in the partition.
Likewise, when a partition is reset to a ready-for-reconfig state, all
cells in the partition remain at boot-is-blocked.
All cells at BIB are inactive cells that can be powered on or off or
removed from the partition without affecting the rest of the partition.
Cells not at BIB proceed to rendezvous with the other cells in the
partition; they form the partition and proceed to boot to the BCH
interface or boot the HP-UX operating system.
The partition allows up to ten minutes for all cells participating in cell
partition rendezvous to complete self-test and rendezvous.
Partition rendezvous completes when either of the following occurs:
all cells with a “y” use-on-next-boot setting complete self-test and
rendezvous, or ten minutes expires since rendezvous began (at that
point, any cells that have not participated inrendezvous arenot made
available to the partition and thus are inactive cells).
5. Boot Console Handler (BCH)
The BCH interface provides the main method for interacting with a
partition during its boot process. BCH runs on top of PDC, and it
provides menus for getting partition status details, for configuring
various partition boot settings, and for issuing HP-UX boot and
reboot commands.
See Chapter 2, “Superdome Console and Service Interface,” on
page 33 for details on using the BCH menu and other service tools.
One processor on the partition’s core cell runs BCH and all other
processors in the partition are idle while the BCH interface is
available.
When a partition’s boot paths and boot actions are set accordingly, a
partition can skip past the BCH interface and automatically boot
HP-UX.