Miss the boot-menu

[Konrad Hegner]

Hi all

Crazy Question:

HW: HP B2000
OS: HPUX 11.00

Problem: If I reboot the machine (or start the machine), first comes 'the 15-second graphical-question', normale followed of the '10-second boot-menu' interuption question. But I miss this question. The machine reboot automatic. I can't go in the boot-menu.

How I can change a attitude, that the boot-menu will be available?

Regards
Konrad

[Pete Randall]

Hi Konrad,

While the system is still up, before you re-boot, you can use the setboot command to turn autoboot off:

setboot -b off


Then, it should stop at the 10 second question and wait for your response. You'll probably want to reset it to on for normal operation, though.

Pete

[Bill Hassell]

In HP-UX, type the command:

setboot -b off

This will pause at the main menu and no longer autoboot. See man setboot

[Konrad Hegner]

Bill, Pete

Thank you for the quit answer, but, we tried this also: nothing. Still the same. I wrote, it is crazy!

Do you need more information?

Regards Konrad

[Pete Randall]

Konrad,

That doesn't make much sense to me. The only thing I can think of is to use setboot to point to a bogus primary boot path and see if that interrupts the boot sequence.

Pete

[Fabrice Pouchot]

Did you try to set autosearch & autoboot OFF ?

Run following commands before shutting down the system:
# setboot -b off
# setboot -s off
to disable AUTOSEARCH and AUTOBOOT.

[Bruno Vidal]

Hi
I remember an old probleme like this. If you have a display type that PDC is not able to handle it don't print anything else on the display, but it switch on the serial port (I had this behavior on a C180) and it use primary path to boot. I think there is two solutions:
-try another display type (a simple one).
-try to connect a console on the serial port.

Good luck.

[Konrad Hegner]

Pete, Fabrice

The Autoboot and Autosearch is off. We tried also the idea from Pete (bogus boot-path): It looks for any possible bootpaths and starts directly with the rigth path.

Meanwhile we had a disussion: I installed last week the diagnostic from the HP-June-2002 CD. Maybe this changed this setting. We works with 5 other B2000 and by them works the boot-menu fine.

Regards

[Konrad Hegner]

Bruno

It isn't a problem from the display or so.
If we taked out the HDD: the boot-menu will work, but we can't work without a Disk ;-)

[Bruno Vidal · Accepted solution]

Hi
I think I've just understood what the problem is. Ifsay that if you remove HDD you have access to the menu, it means that the menu is in secure mode. Remove your HDD, go in the boot menue, take a look to "secure", and try "secure off".

bye.

[Bill Hassell]

The symptoms indicate that secure mode may be turned on. In this mode, the workstation is assumed to be in an unsecured area where anyone can touch the keyboard and qworse, unplug the computer to make it reboot. In that case, a password is used to protect the computer prior to bootup so no one can interrupt the boot process and get to single user mode without the special password.

If the password is unknown, you've got to take the machine apart and remove all bootable devices from the bus. This includes CDROMs, tape drives, all disks and unplug the LAN. Now the box should come up and halt at the PDC prompt where you can enable the normal interrupt feature.

[Konrad Hegner]

Bruno

Concratulation. This anwer deserved 10 Points.
But do you have a solution without to take out the disk? Can I change this setting also from the working system (min. run-level 0).

[Jerome Salyers]

following up on bill's great comments: bill how can this password be set and changed? this would be very helpful...

thanks

jerome

[Bruno Vidal]

No, there is no way to remove this secure mode from software side. No pdc call have been written in order to change this feature (beside it is still possible if you are able to write your own pdc call and plug it inside the kernel in order to modify the stable storage that contain this information).
bye.

[Bill Hassell]

As you might expect, this security feature is designed to be very difficult to change--otherwise it would not be secure. Physical security (ie, access to the keyboard, display and of course, the power cord) is the first step towards keeping a system safe from intruders. The boot password is stored in the processor ROMs which have nothing to do with HP-UX. Once the secure mode is set (you'll see the details when you interact with the ROMs), the machine will no longer pause for interactive bootup features which is exactly what you want for an unsecure location.

Yes, you must disable every possible bootable device to reset the secure mode--inconvenient? Yes, but that's by design. If it were easy to circumvent, then the nightwatchman could easily gain access. By requiring disassembly, you call attention to the machine.