System Administration Guide: Basic Administration
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When to Boot a System

The following table lists system administration tasks and the corresponding boot option that is used to complete the task.

Table 8-2 Booting a System

Reason for System Reboot

Appropriate Boot Option

Information for SPARC Based Systems

Information for x86 Based Systems

Turn off system power due to anticipated power outage.

Turn system power back on

Chapter 10, Shutting Down a System (Tasks)

Chapter 10, Shutting Down a System (Tasks)

Change kernel parameters in the /etc/system file.

Reboot the system to run level 3 (multiuser level with NFS resources shared)

SPARC: How to Boot a System to Run Level 3 (Multiuser Level)

x86: How to Boot a System to Run Level 3 (Multiuser)

Perform file system maintenance, such as backing up or restoring system data.

Press Control-D from run level S to bring the system back to run level 3

SPARC: How to Boot a System to Run Level S (Single-User Level)

x86: How to Boot a System to Run Level S (Single-User Level)

Repair a system configuration file such as /etc/system.

Interactive boot

SPARC: How to Boot a System Interactively

x86: How to Boot a System Interactively

Add or remove hardware from the system.

Reconfiguration boot (turn on system power after adding or removing devices, if devices are not hot-pluggable)

Reconfiguration boot (also to turn on system power after adding or removing hardware)

Adding a System Disk or a Secondary Disk (Task Map) in System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems

Adding a System Disk or a Secondary Disk (Task Map) in System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems

Boot the system by using the kernel debugger (kmdb) to track down a system problem.

Booting kmdb

SPARC: How to Boot the System With the Kernel Debugger (kmdb)

x86: How to Boot a System With the Kernel Debugger in the GRUB Boot Environment (kmdb)

Boot the system in failsafe mode to repair an important system file that is causing system boot failure.

Booting the failsafe archive

How to Boot the Failsafe Archive on a SPARC Based System

How to Boot the Failsafe Archive on an x86 Based System by Using GRUB

To recover from a hung system and force a crash dump.

Recovery boot

SPARC: How to Force a Crash Dump and Reboot of the System

x86: How to Force a Crash Dump and Reboot of the System

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