<HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >What is SRM?</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.57"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="SRM Firmware Howto" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="About this manual" HREF="x11.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="SRM Device Naming" HREF="x99.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="SECT1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >SRM Firmware Howto</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="x11.html" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="x99.html" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT1" ><H1 CLASS="SECT1" ><A NAME="AEN31" >2. What is SRM?</A ></H1 ><P >SRM console is used by Alpha systems as Unix-style boot firmware. Tru64 Unix and OpenVMS depend on it and Linux can boot from it. You can recognize SRM console as a blue screen with a prompt that is presented to you on power-up.</P ><DIV CLASS="SECT2" ><H2 CLASS="SECT2" ><A NAME="AEN34" >2.1. Getting to SRM</A ></H2 ><P >Most Alpha systems have both the SRM and ARC/AlphaBIOS console in their firmware. On one of these machines, if your machine starts up with ARC/AlphaBIOS by default, you can switch to SRM through the "Console Selection" option in the Advanced CMOS Setup menu. To make the change permanent, you should set the <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >os_type</TT > environment variable in SRM to "OpenVMS" or "Unix", like this: <TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><PRE CLASS="SCREEN" >>>> set os_type Unix</PRE ></TD ></TR ></TABLE > </P ><P >Either one will work to boot Linux. However, if you intend to dual-boot OpenVMS on this machine, you must set <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >os_type</TT > to "OpenVMS". Conversely, to return to ARC/AlphaBIOS, you can set <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >os_type</TT > to "NT".</P ><P >Some older systems may not have both SRM and ARC in firmware as shipped. On these systems, you will have to upgrade your firmware. See <A HREF="http://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/Alpha/firmware/" TARGET="_top" >http://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/Alpha/firmware</A > for the latest firmware updates and instructions.</P ><P >A few older systems (primarily evaluation boards such as the 164SX and 164LX) are "half-flash" systems, whose firmware can hold SRM or AlphaBIOS, but not both. If you have one of these machines, you will have to reflash your firmware with the SRM console using the AlphaBIOS firmware update utility. Again, see <A HREF="http://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/Alpha/firmware/" TARGET="_top" >http://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/Alpha/firmware</A > for firmware images and instructions. If you wish to return to AlphaBIOS on these machines, you may rerun the firmware update utility from a floppy in SRM using the <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >fwupdate</TT > command. You can also start AlphaBIOS from a floppy using the <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >arc</TT > command.</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT2" ><H2 CLASS="SECT2" ><A NAME="AEN48" >2.2. Using the SRM console</A ></H2 ><P >The SRM console works very much like a Unix or OpenVMS shell. It views your NVRAM and devices as a pseudo-filesystem. You can see this if you use the <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >ls</TT > command. Also, it contains a fairly large set of diagnostic, setup, and debugging utilities, the details of which are beyond the scope of this document. As in the Unix shell, you can pipe the output of one command to the input of another, and there is a <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >more</TT > command that works not unlike the Unix one. To get a full listing of available commands, run: <TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><PRE CLASS="SCREEN" >>>> help | more</PRE ></TD ></TR ></TABLE > </P ><P >As well, SRM has environment variables, a number of which are pre-defined and correspond to locations in NVRAM. You can view the entire list of environment variables and their values with the <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >show</TT > command (there are quite a few of them, so you will probably want to pipe its output to <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >more</TT >). You can also show variables matching a "glob" pattern - for example, <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >show boot*</TT > will show all the variables starting in "boot".</P ><P >Environment variables are categorized as either <I CLASS="EMPHASIS" >read-only</I >, <I CLASS="EMPHASIS" >warm non-volatile</I >, or <I CLASS="EMPHASIS" >cold non-volatile</I >. The full listing of pre-defined variables is detailed in the Alpha Architecture Reference Manual. The most useful pre-defined environment variables for the purposes of booting Linux are <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >bootdef_dev</TT >, <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >boot_file</TT >, <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >boot_flags</TT >, and <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >auto_action</TT >, all of which are cold non-volatile.</P ><P >To set environment variables, use the <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >set</TT > command, like this: <TABLE BORDER="0" BGCOLOR="#E0E0E0" WIDTH="100%" ><TR ><TD ><PRE CLASS="SCREEN" >>>> set bootdef_def dka0</PRE ></TD ></TR ></TABLE > </P ><P >If you set an undefined variable, it will be created for you, however it will not persist across reboots.</P ><P >The <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >bootdef_dev</TT > variable specifies the device (using VMS naming conventions - see <A HREF="aboot.html#DEVICE-NAMING" >Section 5.6.1</A > for an explanation of these) which will be booted from if no device is specified on the <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >boot</TT > command line, or in an automatic boot. The <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >boot_file</TT > variable contains the filename to be loaded by the secondary bootloader, while <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >boot_flags</TT > contains any extra flags. <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >auto_action</TT > specifies the action which the console should take on power-up. By default, it is set to <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >HALT</TT >, meaning that the machine will start up in the SRM console. Once you have configured your bootloader and the boot-related variables, you can set it to <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >BOOT</TT > in order to boot automatically on power-up.</P ><P >Finally, two helpful console keystrokes you should know are Control-C, which, as in the shell, halts a command in progress (such as an automatic boot), and Control-P, which if issued from the aboot prompt (or other secondary bootloader) will halt the bootloader and return you to the SRM console.</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT2" ><H2 CLASS="SECT2" ><A NAME="HOW-SRM-BOOTS" >2.3. How Does SRM Boot an OS?</A ></H2 ><P >All versions of SRM can boot from SCSI disks and the versions for recent platforms, such as the Noname or AlphaStations can boot from floppy disks as well. Network booting via <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >bootp</TT > is supported. Note that older SRM versions (notably the one for the Jensen) cannot boot from floppy disks. Booting from IDE devices is supported on newer platforms ( 164SX, 164LX, 164UX, DS20, DS10, DP264, UP2000(+), UP1000, UP1100 etc..). </P ><P >Booting Linux with SRM is a two step process: first, SRM loads and transfers control to the secondary bootstrap loader. Then the secondary bootstrap loader sets up the environment for Linux, reads the kernel image from a disk filesystem and finally transfers control to Linux.</P ><P >Currently, there are two secondary bootstrap loaders for Linux: the <I CLASS="EMPHASIS" >raw</I > loader that comes with the Linux kernel and <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >aboot</TT > which is distributed separately. These two loaders are described in more detail below.</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT2" ><H2 CLASS="SECT2" ><A NAME="AEN88" >2.4. Loading The Secondary Bootstrap Loader</A ></H2 ><P >SRM knows nothing about filesystems or disk-partitions. It simply expects that the secondary bootstrap loader occupies a consecutive range of physical disk sector, starting from a given offset. The information on the size of the secondary bootstrap loader and the offset of its first disk sector is stored in the first 512 byte sector. Specifically, the long integer at offset 480 stores the <I CLASS="EMPHASIS" >size</I > of the secondary bootstrap loader (in 512-byte blocks) and the long at offset 488 gives the <I CLASS="EMPHASIS" >sector number</I > at which the secondary bootstrap loader starts. The first sector also stores a flag-word at offset 496 which is always 0 and a checksum at offset 504. The checksum is simply the sum of the first 63 long integers in the first sector.</P ><P >If the checksum in the first sector is correct, SRM goes ahead and reads the <I CLASS="EMPHASIS" >size</I > sectors starting from the sector given in the <I CLASS="EMPHASIS" >sector number</I > field and places them in <I CLASS="EMPHASIS" >virtual</I > memory at address <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >0x20000000</TT >. If the reading completes successfully, SRM performs a jump to address <TT CLASS="LITERAL" >0x20000000</TT >.</P ></DIV ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="x11.html" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="x99.html" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >About this manual</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" > </TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >SRM Device Naming</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >