HP-UX Boot Disks on Integrity systems (in contrast to PARISC systems)

On PARISC-based HP-9000 systems, configuration of system boot disks was simple: the entire disk was used, split apart using logical volumes with LVM. Thus, an HP-9000 system (PARISC) will have a “standard” full disk for the boot disk – such as /dev/disk/disk56 (using the new disk labeling).

However, when using Integrity systems, space must be made at the beginning for EFI and at the end for an HP System Partition – which shows up in HP-UX as a disk with three partitions.

An Integrity system will have several more disks associated with the boot disk (using disk32 as the example):

• /dev/disk/disk32 – this is the full disk. The disk, however, is split into three parts as described below.
• /dev/disk/disk32_p1 – this is the EFI partition. When the system boots, it is this partition which loads the EFI data and runs the EFI shell.
• /dev/disk/disk32_p2 – this is where the HP-UX operating system data is stored. The logical volumes associated with HP-UX will be created here, and /dev/disk/disk32_p2 will be in volume group vg00.
• /dev/disk/disk32_p3 – this partition is an HP system partition of some sort. It is automatically created during installation.

Thus, if you are on an Integrity system and are attempting to follow some older directions, remember to use the appropriate disk label.

There are tools that are designed for Integrity systems with EFI that will help maintain or document these partitions. First is idisk:

# idisk -p /dev/rdisk/disk32
idisk version: 1.44

EFI Primary Header:
        Signature                 = EFI PART
        Revision                  = 0x10000
        HeaderSize                = 0x5c
        HeaderCRC32               = 0x30a62aae
        MyLbaLo                   = 0x1
        MyLbaHi                   = 0x0
        AlternateLbaLo            = 0x88bb991
        AlternateLbaHi            = 0x0
        FirstUsableLbaLo          = 0x40
        FirstUsableLbaHi          = 0x0
        LastUsableLbaLo           = 0x88bb93f
        LastUsableLbaHi           = 0x0
        Disk GUID                 = 43b615f6-a561-11dd-8000-d6217b60e588
        PartitionEntryLbaLo       = 0x2
        PartitionEntryLbaHi       = 0x0
        NumberOfPartitionEntries  = 0xc
        SizeOfPartitionEntry      = 0x80
        PartitionEntryArrayCRC32  = 0x97c6286c

  Primary Partition Table (in 512 byte blocks):
    Partition 1 (EFI):
        Partition Type GUID       = c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b
        Unique Partition GUID     = 43b61920-a561-11dd-8000-d6217b60e588
        Starting Lba Lo            = 0x40
        Starting Lba Hi            = 0x0
        Ending Lba Lo              = 0xf9fff
        Ending Lba Hi              = 0x0
    Partition 2 (HP-UX):
        Partition Type GUID       = 75894c1e-3aeb-11d3-b7c1-7b03a0000000
        Unique Partition GUID     = 43b6195c-a561-11dd-8000-d6217b60e588
        Starting Lba Lo            = 0xfa000
        Starting Lba Hi            = 0x0
        Ending Lba Lo              = 0x87f37ff
        Ending Lba Hi              = 0x0
    Partition 3 (HPSP):
        Partition Type GUID       = e2a1e728-32e3-11d6-a682-7b03a0000000
        Unique Partition GUID     = 43b61970-a561-11dd-8000-d6217b60e588
        Starting Lba Lo            = 0x87f3800
        Starting Lba Hi            = 0x0
        Ending Lba Lo              = 0x88bb7ff
        Ending Lba Hi              = 0x0

Be careful in using idisk, as you can completely destroy your data easily with idisk, and even render your machine unbootable.

Then there are a number of utilities to work with the EFI partition; these are:

• efi_fsinit – initialize EFI partition;
• efi_cp – copy EFI files to and fro;
• efi_mkdir – make a directory on a EFI partition;
• efi_ls – list files on a EFI partition;
• efi_rm – remove files on an EFI partition; and
• efi_rmdir – remove a directory from an EFI partition.

These commands are further documented in efi(4) and in their respective man pages.