Logical Interchange Format (LIF)

[Zafar A. Mohammed]

Hi,
Can anyone explain about the usage of lif. After reading the man pages also I am not getting the clear concept. Help will be appreciated
Thanks

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Hi,

LIF's main purpose is to provide boot information. The LIF area on a boot disk contains the data and programs necessary to locate, load, and execute the HP-UX kernel including the secondary OS loader program 'ISL'.

LIF's could be used to store any data for transferring data and there are special utilities (e.g. lifcp) to transfer data to/from
conventional filesystems to a LIF area.

Hope this helps, Clay

[Victor_5]

Regarding boot process, PDC chooses a boot disk first, then ISL(Initial System Loader) chooses a kernel to boot, then the HP-UX loads the kernel, the last step kernel brings the system to a fully functional state.

ISL is the second player during the boot process, the ISL consults the AUTO file to determine the pathname of the default kernel, and any options that should be passed to the hpux kernel loader. Finally, the ISL loads and runs the hpux utility from the LIF area on the boot disk. LIF is a special area for those kind of information.

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

The LIF area is an area on a bootable drive that contains several programs.. such as Offline Diagnostics, ODE.. hpux, the kernel loader, the AUTO file that defines the options to pass to the hpux loader for example, ISL, the initial system loader, MAPPER (elemental ioscan)

LIF areas can be created/added/listed/copied to using dd if=lif (of=media bs=2k) /usr/lib/uxlib (I believe) and lifls and lifcp.

Usually non boot disk LIF areas are used when upgrading firmware offline, or booting from support media.

Bill