Power fail and crash recovery

Normally, the system will reboot itself at power-up or after crashes. An automatic consistency check of the file systems will be performed, and unless this fails, the system will resume multi-user operations.

Cold starts

The 386 PC AT clones attempt to boot the floppy disk drive A (otherwise known as drive 0) first, and failing that, attempt to boot the hard disk C (otherwise known as hard disk controller 1, drive 0). The NetBSD bootblocks are loaded and started either by the BIOS, or by a boot selector program (such as OS-BS, BOOTEASY, the OS/2 Boot Menu or NetBSD's boot-selecting master boot record - see mbr(8)).

Normal Operation

Once running, a banner similar to the following will appear:

>> NetBSD BIOS Boot, revision 3.0 
>> (user@buildhost, builddate) 
>> Memory: 637/15360 k 
Press return to boot now, any other key for boot menu 
booting hd0a:netbsd - starting in 5

After a countdown, the system image listed will be loaded. In the example above, it will be “hd0a:netbsd” which is the file netbsd on partition “a” of the NetBSD MBR partition of the first hard disk known to the BIOS (which is an IDE or similar device - see the BUGS section).

Pressing a key within the time limit, or before the boot program starts, will enter interactive mode. When using a short or 0 timeout, it is often useful to interrupt the boot by holding down a shift key, as some BIOSes and BIOS extensions will drain the keystroke buffer at various points during POST.

If present, the file /boot.cfg will be used to configure the behaviour of the boot loader including setting the timeout, choosing a console device, altering the banner text and displaying a menu allowing boot commands to be easily chosen. See boot.cfg(5).

The NetBSD/i386 boot loader can boot a kernel using either the native NetBSD boot protocol, or the “multiboot” protocol (which is compatible with some other operating systems). In the native NetBSD boot protocol, options are passed from the boot loader to the kernel via flag bits in the boothowto variable (see boothowto(9)). In the multiboot protocol, options are passed from the boot loader to the kernel as strings.

Diagnostic Output

If the first stage boot fails to load the boot, it will print a terse message indicating the reason for the failure. The possible error messages and their cause are listed in mbr(8).

If the first stage boot succeeds, the banner will be shown and the error messages should be self-explanatory.

Interactive mode

In interactive mode, the boot loader will present a prompt, allowing input of these commands:

boot [device:] [filename] [-1234abcdmqsvxz]

The default device will be set to the disk that the boot loader was loaded from. To boot from an alternate disk, the full name of the device should be given at the prompt. device is of the form xd [N[x]] where xd is the device from which to boot, N is the unit number, and x is the partition letter.

The following list of supported devices may vary from installation to installation:

hd

Hard disks as numbered by the BIOS. This includes ST506, IDE, ESDI, RLL disks on a WD100[2367] or lookalike controller(s), and SCSI disks on SCSI controllers recognized by the BIOS.

fd

Floppy drives as numbered by the BIOS.

The default filename is netbsd; if the boot loader fails to successfully open that image, it then tries netbsd.gz (expected to be a kernel image compressed by gzip), followed by netbsd.old, netbsd.old.gz, onetbsd, and finally onetbsd.gz. Alternate system images can be loaded by just specifying the name of the image.

Options are:

-1

Sets the machine-dependent flag RB_MD1 in boothowto. In NetBSD/i386, this disables multiprocessor boot; the kernel will boot in uniprocessor mode.

-2

Sets the machine-dependent flag RB_MD2 in boothowto. In NetBSD/i386, this disables ACPI.

-3

Sets the machine-dependent flag RB_MD3 in boothowto. In NetBSD/i386, this has no effect.

-4

Sets the machine-dependent flag RB_MD4 in boothowto. In NetBSD/i386, this has no effect.

-a

Sets the RB_ASKNAME flag in boothowto. This causes the kernel to prompt for the root file system device, the system crash dump device, and the path to init(8).

-b

Sets the RB_HALT flag in boothowto. This causes subsequent reboot attempts to halt instead of rebooting.

-c

Sets the RB_USERCONF flag in boothowto. This causes the kernel to enter the userconf(4) device configuration manager as soon as possible during the boot. userconf(4) allows devices to be enabled or disabled, and allows device locators (such as hardware addresses or bus numbers) to be modified before the kernel attempts to attach the devices.

-d

Sets the RB_KDB flag in boothowto. Requests the kernel to enter debug mode, in which it waits for a connection from a kernel debugger; see ddb(4).

-m

Sets the RB_MINIROOT flag in boothowto. Informs the kernel that a mini-root file system is present in memory.

-q

Sets the AB_QUIET flag in boothowto. Boot the system in quiet mode.

-s

Sets the RB_SINGLE flag in boothowto. Boot the system in single-user mode.

-v

Sets the AB_VERBOSE flag in boothowto. Boot the system in verbose mode.

-x

Sets the AB_DEBUG flag in boothowto. Boot the system with debug messages enabled.

-z

Sets the AB_SILENT flag in boothowto. Boot the system in silent mode.

consdev dev

Immediately switch the console to the specified device dev and reprint the banner. dev must be one of pc, com0, com1, com2, com3, com0kbd, com1kbd, com2kbd, com3kbd, or auto. See Console Selection Policy in boot_console(8).

dev [device]

Set the default drive and partition for subsequent filesystem operations. Without an argument, print the current setting. device is of the form specified in boot.

help

Print an overview about commands and arguments.

load module [arguments]

Load the specified kernel module, and pass it the specified arguments. If the module name is not an absolute path, /stand/<arch> /<osversion> /modules/<module> /<module> .kmod is used. Possible used of the load command include loading a memory disk image before booting a kernel, or loading a Xen DOM0 kernel before booting the Xen hypervisor. See boot.cfg(5) for examples.

In addition to the boot options specified above, the DOM0 kernel accepts (arguments being separated with spaces):

bootdev=dev (or root=dev)

Override the default boot device. dev can be a unit name (“wd0”), or an interface name (“bge0”, “wm0”, ...), for cases where the root file system has to be loaded from network (see the BUGS section in pxeboot(8)).

console=dev

Console used by DOM0 kernel during boot. dev accepts the same values as the ones given for the consdev command. See Console Selection Policy in boot_console(8).

ip=my_ip:serv_ip:gw_ip:mask:host:iface

Specify various parameters for a network boot (IPs are in dot notation), each one separated by a colon:

my_ip

address of the host

serv_ip

address of the NFS server

gw_ip

address of the gateway

mask

network mask

host

address of the host

iface

interface (e.g. “xennet0” or “eth0”)

nfsroot=address:rootpath

Boot the system with root on NFS. address is the address of the NFS server, and rootpath is the remote mount point for the root file system.

pciback.hide=pcidevs

Pass a list of PCI IDs for use with the PCI backend driver, pciback(4). pcidevs is formed of multiple IDs (in bus:device.function notation), each ID being surrounded with brackets. PCI domain IDs are currently ignored. See pciback(4).

ls [path]

Print a directory listing of path, containing inode number, filename, and file type. path can contain a device specification.

modules {on | off | enabled | disabled}

The values enabled, on will enable module loading for boot and multiboot, whereas disabled, off will turn off the feature.

multiboot kernel [arguments]

Boot the specified kernel, using the “multiboot” protocol instead of the native NetBSD boot protocol. The kernel is specified in the same way as with the boot command.

The multiboot protocol may be used in the following cases:

NetBSD/Xen kernels

The Xen DOM0 kernel must be loaded as a module using the load command, and the Xen hypervisor must be booted using the multiboot command. Options for the DOM0 kernel (such as “-s” for single user mode) must be passed as options to the load command. Options for the hypervisor (such as “dom0_mem=256M” to reserve 256 MB of memory for DOM0) must be passed as options to the multiboot command. See boot.cfg(5) for examples on how to boot NetBSD/Xen.

NetBSD multiboot kernels

A NetBSD kernel that was built with options MULTIBOOT (see multiboot(8)) may be booted with either the boot or multiboot command, passing the same arguments in either case.

Non-NetBSD kernels

A kernel for a non-NetBSD operating system that expects to be booted using the multiboot protocol (such as by the GNU “GRUB” boot loader) may be booted using the multiboot command. See the foreign operating system's documentation for the available arguments.

quit

Reboot the system.

userconf command

Pass the command to userconf(4) at boot time . These commands are processed before the interactive userconf(4) shell is executed, if requested .

vesa {modenum | on | off | enabled | disabled | list}

Initialise the video card to the specified resolution and bit depth. The modenum should be in the form of 0x100, 800x600, 800x600x32. The values enabled, on put the display into the default mode, and disabled, off returns the display into standard vga mode. The value list lists all supported modes.

In an emergency, the bootstrap methods described in the NetBSD installation notes for the i386 architecture can be used to boot from floppy or other media, or over the network.