OpenSolaris

Flag Day: Fast Reboot by default and Panic Fast Reboot

Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:54:21 -0700
From: Sherry Moore <sherry.moore at sun dot com>
To: on-all at eng dot sun dot com, onnv-gate at onnv dot eng dot sun dot com
Subject: Flag Day: Fast Reboot by default and Panic Fast Reboot

The putback for

    PSARC 2008/760 Boot configuration Service
    PSARC 2009/091 Reboot to firmware
    PSARC 2009/092 libgrubmgmt - library for GRUB menu management

and associated bugs, constitutes a flag day for all ON developers and
x86 (privileged) users.  You must use "nightly" to build and "bfu" to
load the new boot archive.

For x86 users:

    The "reboot(1M)" and "init(1M) 6" commands, on all Fast Reboot
    capable x86 systems will bypass the firmware by default.

    A system is considered Fast Reboot capable, if the following applies:

	1. All drivers have implemented the quiesce(9E) function.
	2. The system is not among blacklisted platforms.

	Blacklisted platforms include guests on VirtualBox, guests on
	VMware, and the Tyan MCP55 reference whitebox.

    If the system must go through the firmware, for example, to PXE
    boot, you can reboot the system using the reboot command with the
    -p option:

	# reboot -p

    Or, you can disable the default Fast Reboot behavior using this
    command:

	# svccfg -s "system/boot-config:default" \
	    setprop config/fastreboot_default=false
	# svcadm refresh svc:/system/boot-config:default

    All features introduced by
	    PSARC 2008/382 Fast Reboot
    in build 100 are now enabled by default (without specifying the
    "-f" flag) on supported platforms.  Also, two additional
    capabilities are introduced with this putback:

	1. Fast Reboot can now process the GRUB menu.

	The following two commands will fast reboot a system to the
	default entry in the menu.lst file:

	    # reboot
	    # init 6

	The following command will fast reboot to the <n>th menu entry:

	    # reboot <n>

	2. Fast Reboot on panic.

	On Fast Reboot capable systems, the system will bypass the
	firmware on panic.  To disable this behavior, use this command:

	    # svccfg -s "system/boot-config:default" \
		setprop config/fastreboot_onpanic=false
	    # svcadm refresh svc:/system/boot-config:default

    Note: Disabling the boot-config:default service has no effect on
    default fast reboot behavior.

For x86 developers:

    The boot-config service depends on the milestone multi-user.
    Developers who need to debug panics before the system reaches
    multi-user can enable the capability earlier in the boot sequence
    by adding the following information to /etc/system:

	set fastreboot_onpanic=1

The following man page updates will integrate in build 112:

    6793807 - Need to update reboot(1M) man pages for Fast Reboot by default
    6793810 - Need to update init(1M) man pages for Fast Reboot by default

Please send questions to fastboot-core at sun dot com.

Product/Catetory/Subcategory for filing bugs against x86 Fast Reboot:

    solaris/kernel/boot-x86, with the keyword "Fastreboot"

Enjoy,
fastboot-core at sun dot com
~--
Sherry Moore, Solaris Core Kernel	http://blogs.sun.com/sherrym