Convert Itanium EFI blk device to fs

[Craig Thoman]

Dear HP Forum-ers,

I have 3 SCSI drive's in my rx2600. I needed
to correct the 3rd drives description in the
the EFI boot list. No 'rename' exists so I
delete it, and have tried to re-add it, but
that 3rd drive isn't being offered in "Add" list of the EFI boot options menu. The drive
seems to have lost it's "fs2" tag, and is now
called "blk9", with 'Parts' blkA, B & C.

ie:

blk9 = Apci(HWP0002,100)/Pci(1|0)/SCSI(Pun2Lun0)
blkA = Apci(HWP0002,100)/Pci(1|0)/SCSI(Pun2Lun0)/HD(Part1,Sig)
blkB = Apci(HWP0002,100)/Pci(1|0)/SCSI(Pun2Lun0)/HD(Part2,Sig)
blkC = Apci(HWP0002,100)/Pci(1|0)/SCSI(Pun2Lun0)/HD(Part3,Sig)

I've read a bit of online & built in help and
tried various combinations of: mount, map, dh
commands without success.

Can someone please tell me how to make an fs
device from the blk one(s)? Looking at the other
2 disks, I think blkA is the one I want to
become 'fs2'

Thanks in advance,
Craig.

PS: I vote for a rename option in future
EFI releases ;-)

[Stefan Stechemesser]

Hi Craig,

the EFI shell scans the disks and partitions in the order it sees it and assigns the "blk" numbers to each partition. If it finds an EFI Filesystem (vfat like) then it assigns additionaly a "fsX" number to it that is normally another number than the blk number.
You can check which disk is behind the fsX: by entering the "map" command and verifying the ACPI Hardware Path.
If the EFI File does not create a fsX entry for a particular disk, this means that there is no EFI filesystem on it.

How to make an EFI Filesystem ?
-Install an Operating System
or
-on HPUX you can use "idisk" to make partitions (data will be erased) and "mkboot" to create the EFI filesystem

I hope this helps

Stefan

[Craig Thoman]

Hi Stefan!
Thanks for the quick reply. That's good info'
but also sounds like I've lost the fs!

There definately was an EFI File-System on that
disk. [It was Win Server 2003]. All I did was
delete an
option from from the EFI Boot List using the 'Boot
Options' menu. Maybe doing that has changed/altered
the disk?

Is there a EFI option/tool to "rediscover" what was
on a disk?

Thx!,

Craig.

[Stefan Stechemesser]

Hi Craig,

I'm not aware of a recovery tool on the EFI Shell. It is indeed strange that you only removed the bootoption and after that the EFI filesystem was lost. This is not normal. However, there is no (easy) way to recreate the bootoption for a windows partition, because the Windows loader cannot be called manually. Because of this, each Windows EFI partitions contains a tool named "nvrboot" that can be used to save backups of EXISTING boot entries to a file on the EFI partition. If you later loose your boot option (f.e. after a system card replacement) then you can recover it with nvrboot. Unfortunately, if the complete EFI partition of your Windows disk is lost, then I do not have a good idea how to recreate it.

Best regards

Stefan