Automatic system recovery functionality enables the system to resume operation after experiencing certain nonfatal hardware faults or failures. When ASR is enabled, the system’s firmware diagnostics automatically detect failed hardware components. An autoconfiguring capability designed into the system firmware enables the system to unconfigure failed components and to restore system operation. As long as the system is capable of operating without the failed component, the ASR features enable the system to reboot automatically, without operator intervention.

Note – ASR is not activated until you enable it. See “Enabling and Disabling Automatic System Recovery” on page 33.

For more information about ASR, refer to the service manual for your server.

AutoBoot Options

The system firmware stores a configuration variable called auto-boot?, which controls whether the firmware will automatically boot the operating system after each reset. The default setting for your platform is true.

Normally, if a system fails power-on diagnostics, auto-boot?is ignored and the system does not boot unless an operator boots the system manually. An automatic boot is generally not acceptable for booting a system in a degraded state. Therefore, the server’s OpenBoot firmware provides a second setting, auto-boot-on-error?. This setting controls whether the system will attempt a degraded boot when a subsystem failure is detected. Both the auto-boot?and auto-boot-on-error?switches must be set to true to enable an automatic degraded boot.

▼To enable an Automatic Degraded Boot

●Set the switches by typing:

ok setenv auto-boot? true

ok setenv auto-boot-on-error? true

Note – The default setting for auto-boot-on-error?is false. The system will not attempt a degraded boot unless you change this setting to true. In addition, the system will not attempt a degraded boot in response to any fatal nonrecoverable error, even if degraded booting is enabled. For examples of fatal nonrecoverable errors, see “Error Handling Summary” on page 32.

Chapter 2 Managing RAS Features and System Firmware 31