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EFI on Integrity

Posted: Fri Jun 28, 2019 3:12 pm
by vmskostoff
Looking for documentation on EFI. EFI is critical for interacting with Integrity before booting the OS, OpenVMS.

Re: EFI on Integrity

Posted: Sun Jun 30, 2019 2:42 pm
by martinv
See VSI's link page (reachable from training.vmssoftware.com, which can't be resolved for me right now) for quite some links referring to EFI (including my own slides).

Re: EFI on Integrity

Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2019 2:25 pm
by vmskostoff
Hi MartinV. Thanks for your reply. I am using your PDF already. Very Good.
Just still crawling to get our backup up and going. Have not been down this path
before so being cautious and at times .... just unsure.

Added in 51 minutes 16 seconds:
Question: At the following, I am seeing a potential criss cross in terms of what local disk is assigned to VMS name.
for example,
fs0:\EFI\VMS> vms_show device
VMS: DKA400
EFI: fs4:

VMS: DKA100
EFI: fs0:

When I add DKA400, as a boot entry and boot system, it boots system and it should be booting STANDALONE.
When I add DKA100, as a boot entry and boot system, it boots into STANDALONE.

Confused.?? I am adding the boot entry based upon the SAS address in VMS_SHOW DEVICE.

DKA400 was loaded with STANDALONE from CD.
DKA100 is local system disk.

Can I rename VMS local disk names at this level, meaning at the .... fs0:\EFI\VMS> ??
Other option?

Re: EFI on Integrity

Posted: Thu Jul 04, 2019 12:38 am
by martinv
EFI boots from the ACPI path to the FAT partition. VMS names its devices based on the SCSI ID and LUN. The VMS device name has no effect to the EFI boot process. Which sysroot is booted into is determined by the VMS boot flag. I must admit that do not know where that value is stored or how it can be changed. If you set up your boot entries through SYS$MANAGER:BOOT_OPTIONS.COM it does work out. How did you add your boot entries?

Re: EFI on Integrity

Posted: Mon Jul 08, 2019 12:10 pm
by vmskostoff
I connected up to the rx3600 through the serial port/putty on my laptop.
The EFI menu was used to add the boot entry.
I am not sure if the results would be different, should not be, if I added a boot option
AFTER the rx3600 was booted. Then use BOOT_OPTIONS.COM.
Thoughts?

Re: EFI on Integrity

Posted: Sat Jul 13, 2019 12:52 am
by martinv
There are (at least) three methods to add boot entries:
  • the EFI shell bcfg command. This is the least desirable option as you have to specify the ACPI path directly
  • the VMS_BCFG.efi program from a bootable VMS disk (e.g. the OS DVD). This uses VMS device names and boot flags (see this HPE support page). I think I have seen variations (based on the VMS version) where there are different commands depending on whether you specify ACPI paths ("add"), hard drive path ("addp"), handle ("addh") or VMS device names ("addv") - the built-in command help shown when called without parameters should show these.
  • SYS$MANAGER:BOOT_OPTIONS.COM
The EFI implementations of some Integrity models also have a "graphical" Boot Manager configuration menu entry.

Of course all three (or four) should end up in the same boot entry created. The crucial thing to look at are the boot flags.

NB: The boot flags are stored in the NVRAM variable VMS_FLAGS. Not sure yet how boot flags for different boot entries are stored, though.