Tipps and Tricks for booting a Itanium from EFI

• Keep only valid Bootoptions and Options you need
• Commands that can help you  recover at the shell without a DVD
• Shell> \efi\vms\vms_bcfg boot fibre 1
• Shell> \efi\vms\vms_bcfg boot add 1 dka0: -fl 0,0 "HP OpenVMS I64"

What happens if your boot entry is not working or invalid and you know you have a bootable OS out there and you don't have bootable CD.

You can stop the machine at the SHELL during boot

SHELL>MAP

If you can get to a vms partition, then you can run these commands and try to add your boot option

fs3:
fs3:\efi\vms VMS_BCFG.EFI boot show
The boot option list is:
01. VenHw(D65A6B8C-71E5-4DF0-A909-F0D2992B5AA9) "EFI Shell [Built-in]"
02. Acpi(HWP0002,300)/Pci(1|0)/Pci(4|0)/Fibre(WWN500507680140000c,Lun1000000000000)/HD(Part1,Sig0C516100-6657-11DC-AA2E-AA000400FEFF)/ \efi\vms\vms_loader.efi "OpenVMS on $1$DGA78: FGA0.5005-0768-0140-000c"
03. Acpi(HWP0002,300)/Pci(1|0)/Pci(4|0)/Fibre(WWN500507680140000c,Lun1000000000000)/HD(Part1,Sig0C516100-6657-11DC-AA2E-AA000400FEFF)/ \efi\vms\vms_loader.efi "OpenVMS on $1$DGA78: FGA0.5005-0768-0140-000c"
04. Acpi(HWP0002,100)/Pci(1|0)/Scsi(Pun0,Lun0)/HD(Part1,Sig76D23A51-9B8B-11DB-A618-AA000400FEFF)/\efi\vms\vms_loader.efi "DKA0 PKA0.0" OPT
05. Acpi(HWP0002,100)/Pci(1|0)/Scsi(Pun0,Lun0)/HD(Part1,Sig76D23A51-9B8B-11DB-A618- AA000400FEFF)/\efi\vms\vms_loader.efi "HP-UX Primary Boot: 0/1/1/0.0.0"
06. Acpi(HWP0002,0)/Pci(2|0)/Ata(Primary,Master) "CDROM" OPT  fs3:\efi\vms>

Shell> \efi\vms\vms_bcfg boot fibre 1 (Turns on the FIBRE SCAN)
Shell> \efi\vms\vms_bcfg boot add 1 dka0: -fl 0,0 "HP OpenVMS I64" (adds boot entry for DKA0: in position 1)

System log can fill up and when they are full, they can prevent a machine from booting. You would have to stop the machine at t the shell and issue:

SHELL>clearlogs
It will ask if you want to clear all logs, if your logs are full you will need to say yes to continue your boot

So many boot options, make sure we know where we will end up should there be issues:

In the example below, we want to boot off DGA8. Boot options has given us 4 paths to this disk 2 from FGA and 2 from FGB.

Should there be an issue with the SAN and we can't get to options 1-4, if the local disk is still there and setup, we will boot from there. This may not be the desired result you wish in option 5 and then if that isn't there we can boot off option 6 if it is there and again this may not be your wish.

Make sure these entries are correct for your needs

Entry  Description                                                Options
-----  ---------------------------------------------------------- -------------   
    1   Cluster84 Common SAN Disk DGA8 FGB0.5000-1FE1-5010-DF2C    -fl 0,0          
         $1$DGA8 PCI(0|4|0|1) Fibre(50001FE15010DF2C,Lun8000000000000)   
    2   Cluster84 Common SAN Disk DGA8 FGB0.5000-1FE1-5010-DF28    -fl 0,0
         $1$DGA8 PCI(0|4|0|1) Fibre(50001FE15010DF28,Lun8000000000000)   
    3   Cluster84 Common SAN Disk DGA8 FGA0.5000-1FE1-5010-DF2C    -fl 0,0
         $1$DGA8 PCI(0|4|0|0) Fibre(50001FE15010DF2C,Lun8000000000000)
    4   Cluster84 Common SAN Disk DGA8 FGA0.5000-1FE1-5010-DF28    -fl 0,0
          $1$DGA8 PCI(0|4|0|0) Fibre(50001FE15010DF28,Lun8000000000000
     5   Boot VMS84 PKA0.5000-C500-00D2-81D9                        -fl 0,0
         $31$DKA100 PCI(0|2|1|0) Sas(5000C50000D281D9,Lun0)
     6   Boot VMS831H1 PKA0.5000-00E0-183C-28E2                     -fl 0,0
         $31$DKA200 PCI(0|2|1|0) Sas(500000E0183C28E2,Lun0)
     7   iLO Virtual Media
           Device not Found
     8   Core LAN Port 1
           EWA0 PCI(0|1|1|0) Mac(001b787a93e0)
     9   Core LAN Port 2
           EWB0 PCI(0|1|1|1) Mac(001b787a93e1)
    10   Core LAN Port 3
          EWC0 PCI(0|2|2|0) Mac(001b787a93d4)
    11   Core LAN Port 4
          EWD0 PCI(0|2|2|1) Mac(001b787a93d5)
    12   EFI Shell [Built-in]
           VenHw(d65a6b8c-71e5-4df0-d2f009a9)
    13   FW Update Boot Option
           Non-OpenVMS Boot entry