SoftReboot White Paper HP Part Number: 5900-2123 Published: March 2012
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About This Document This document discusses about the features of SoftReboot. SoftReboot solution is a feature for HP-UX 11iv3 operating system environment. Intended Audience This document is intended for owners and customers anyone seeking information about the features of SoftReboot. Typographic Conventions This document uses the following typographical conventions: IMPORTANT: This alert provides essential information to explain a concept or to complete a task.
Executive Summary Not all white papers apply to all configurations, so you must be sure that this white paper is appropriate for your system and circumstances. This white paper addresses only the following supported system configurations. Table 1 Supported System Configurations Requirement Description Operating system SoftReboot feature is supported from HP-UX B.11.31.1109 fusion release onwards i.e. HP-UX 11iv3 operating system environment.
1 Technologies / Features SoftReboot feature reduces the operating system reboot time experienced during routine system maintenance. SoftReboot achieves this downtime reduction by skipping the platform hardware reset and booting the next kernel directly from the current operating system instance. The time saved due to SoftReboot solution varies across platforms and different hardware configurations of the same platform. Hence, the down time savings due to SoftReboot are not quantifiable.
2 Installation and Uninstallation Installation Post1203 To install the SoftRebootEnh, perform the following steps: 1. Download enabler patches to target machine from http://h20566.www2.hp.com/portal/ site/hpsc/public/. 2. Install the SoftRebootEnh bundle from B.11.31.1203 OE that is available electronically and on media. SoftRebootEnh bundle is available from B.11.31.1203 OE onwards. 3. Verify supported platform. 4.
3 Configuration and Usage SoftReboot functionality requires both "rbloader" and "uxex" DLKMs to be loaded. Upon installation of the SoftReboot product, these two DLKMs are automatically configured to be loaded. Reboot and shutdown utilities have been enhanced for SoftReboot and provide a new option, "-S", to initiate a SoftReboot instead of normal reboot. SoftReboot can also be invoked as part of swinstall SD command via a new option -x softreboot.
4 Behavior and Use case Examples When SoftReboot feature is enabled with reboot/shutdown/swinstall options, system reboots by omitting firmware reset and the next kernel is loaded directly from the current kernel instance. Due to this, the bootloader stage is completely skipped. In the current release, the next kernel configured for boot is automatically loaded. With this, the next kernel boot options cannot be specified.
5 Limitations / Known Issues Hardware configuration changes Primary boot path changes If the boot path is changed using setboot to a different disk, the SoftReboot should not be invoked. Instead normal reboot should be issued. HyperThreading settings If the hyper threading settings are changed using setboot -m ON/OFF then those settings cannot take effect across a SoftReboot. To effect the settings, normal reboot without "-S" option should be done.
A SoftReboot Software Depot List A complete list of contents of SoftRebootEnh software bundle is as follows: hpkdbia4# swlist -l product SoftRebootEnh # Initializing... # Contacting target "hpkdbia4"... # # Target: hpkdbia4:/ # # SoftRebootEnh B.11.31.%2011_1007_DP HPUX SoftReboot SoftRebootEnh.SoftReboot B.11.31.%2011_1007_DP SoftReboot Enablement hpkdbia4# swlist -l fileset SoftRebootEnh # Initializing... # Contacting target "hpkdbia4"... # # Target: hpkdbia4:/ # # SoftRebootEnh B.11.31.
B Messages During SoftReboot Diagnostics and Driver messages during SoftReboot During a SoftReboot the user may notice warnings or errors from the diagnostics and other I/O drivers. These messages are safe and do not affect the behavior of the next kernel booted. A typical set of messages from diagnostics driver is as follows: The diagnostic logging facility has started receiving excessive errors from the I/O subsystem.
