From: pSeries AIX Geek (aixgeek@YAHOO.COM)
Date: Wed Jan 22 2003 - 20:35:57 EST
Note: forwarded message attached.
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attached mail follows:
Before I blindly go down the road less traveled into
that good night, washing down the blue pill (or is it
red) with a cup of Supportline koolaid (a cup of their
finest green) ...
I've taken it as an article of faith for years (ever
since I myself was associated with IBM Supportline)
that once we got away from having microchannel
machines with keys, that the service mode bootlist was
pretty much useless. I.e. -- the code support was
there (to support models with keys) but that it had no
effect on PCI machines.
The implications:
- You can put your normal mode bootlist as "cd0 hdisk0
hdisk1" and if there is a CD in the drive, you'll boot
to maintenance mode (since it detects the CD). *** By
the way, I'm very familiar with this particular
behavior and exploit it at remote sites.
- If you hit F5/5 (depending on monitor) during
bootup, the system overrides "your" bootlist in favor
of the "default" bootlist embedded in the system. ***
I'm sure we're all aware of this functionality.
Supportline is indicating that this "default" bootlist
is your "service mode" bootlist. I've never heard
such a thing -- and I spent a lot of time floating
around IBM. In fact, this declaration is complete
CONTRARY to what I've heard from AIX developers in
Austin.
Before I actually go and find a box on which to try
this (my thinking is to set my service mode bootlist
to rmt0, stick in a CD, hit F5 on the boot, and see
what happens, once I can find a test box no one in
this office is using), can anyone corroborate either
my or "Supportline's" belief [I won't go so far yet as
to equate IBM's stance with Supportline's.]
- pAG
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