DOCUMENT ID:  1038-02

SYNOPSIS:     Booting Solaris x86 in verbose mode

OS RELEASE:   

PRODUCT:      Solaris x86

KEYWORDS:     boot verbose mode hang system


DESCRIPTION:

Trying to load Solaris x86 from a hard drive and it hangs without any
error messages.  The system never recovers and often has to be rebooted. 


SOLUTION:

This type of problem can be very frustrating because you don't have a
clue as to where the system hung in the boot process. 

The lines of the booting script will be displayed as they are executed
if you set the verbose mode of the secondary boot.  See the Debugging
section of boot(1M) for details.  There are at least two ways you can do
this:


1) Edit the /etc/bootrc file, inserting the following line at the
   beginning:

        verbose

Everything in the bootrc file will be displayed to the screen as it is
executed.  This will tell you what the system was trying to execute when
it hung. 

Note: If you are booting from the CD or can't get the system up at all,
you can't do this. 


2) At the boot prompt, enter "i" to run the boot interpreter
   interactively.  Then enter:

        verbose
        source /etc/bootrc

This will re-run the booting script in verbose mode.


Note: This does not cause the secondary boot to tell you about the
details of machine initialization. 


DATE APPROVED: 09/12/95