Booting a Specific Program

Booting a Specific Program

The boot command starts the system when you want to use a specific boot program and give optional arguments to that program. The syntax of the boot command is:

boot[-f program][-n][args]

-f specifies the program you want to boot. The program name must contain fewer than 20 characters. If you do not specify this option, the environment variable bootfile specifies the default program. boot normally loads sash.

When you specify a program, you can include a device specification. If you don't, the Command Monitor uses the device specifications in the environment variable path. The Command Monitor tries in turn each device that you specify in path, until it finds the program you request, or until it has tried all the devices listed in path.

-n means no go: it loads the specified program, but does not transfer control to it. Instead, -n returns you to the Command Monitor command environment.
args are variables that the Command Monitor passes to the program you're booting. For an arg that starts with a hyphen (-), you must prepend an additional hyphen so that the Command Monitor doesn't think that the argument is intended for itself. The Command Monitor removes the extra hyphen before it passes the argument to the booted program. For more information, see "Booting the Standalone Shell".

For example, to boot the disk formatter/exerciser program (fx) from the cartridge tape drive, use this command:

boot -f SCSI(0)tape(7)partition(0)fx

Without any arguments, boot loads the program specified in bootfile.