Summary

This chapter provided a complete description of the OpenBoot environment, the PROM, NVRAM, and the kernel.

In this chapter, I described how to access OpenBoot and the various commands available to test and provide information about the hardware.

I described the OpenBoot architecture. I explained how OpenBoot controls many of the hardware devices. Using the programmable user interface available in OpenBoot, the system administrator can set several parameters that control system hardware and peripherals.

Device names were also explained in this chapter. Throughout this book, I will be referring to various device names used in Solaris. It’s important that you understand each one of them. I’ll revisit this topic in the next chapter, where devices and device drivers are covered in depth. Along with device names, I explained how to set temporary and permanent device aliases.

Finally, I described how to secure the OpenBoot environment from unauthorized access, and I took you deeper into the topic we discussed in the previous chapter—booting and loading the kernel.

Previous chapters described how to load the Solaris environment and boot the operating system from the OpenBoot PROM. The next chapter will describe in detail how the system recognizes and utilizes all of the devices connected to the system, such as disks and tape drives.