SoftReboot White Paper

HP Part Number: 766152-001a

Published: December 2014
© Copyright 2012, 2014 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
Legal Notices
The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express
warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall
not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. Intel and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel
Corporation or its subsidiaries in the Unted States and other countries. Microsoft and Windows are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft
Corporation.
Contents
HP secure development lifecycle......................................................................4
About this document......................................................................................5
Intended audience....................................................................................................................5
Typographic conventions...........................................................................................................5
Executive summary........................................................................................6
1 Technologies/features.................................................................................7
SoftReboot integrated with DRD..................................................................................................7
Product contents.......................................................................................................................7
2 Installation and uninstallation.......................................................................8
Installation...............................................................................................................................8
1203..................................................................................................................................8
1303..................................................................................................................................8
1403..................................................................................................................................8
Uninstallation...........................................................................................................................9
3 Configuration and usage...........................................................................10
4 Behavior and use case examples................................................................11
5 Constraints..............................................................................................12
Hardware configuration changes..............................................................................................12
Primary boot path changes.................................................................................................12
HyperThreading settings......................................................................................................12
nPar hardware setting changes............................................................................................12
Cell OLAD........................................................................................................................12
Interface card OL* (PCI OL*)..............................................................................................12
Dynamic processor resiliency...............................................................................................12
Known issues with SoftReboot...................................................................................................12
6 Troubleshooting........................................................................................13
7 Documentation feedback...........................................................................14
A SoftReboot Software Depot List...................................................................15
B Messages during SoftReboot......................................................................16

Contents 3
HP secure development lifecycle
Starting with HP-UX 11i v3 March 2013 update release, HP secure development lifecycle provides
the ability to authenticate HP-UX software. Software delivered through this release has been digitally
signed using HP's private key. You can now verify the authenticity of the software before installing
the products, delivered through this release.
To verify the software signatures in signed depot, the following products must be installed on your
system:
• B.11.31.1303 or later version of SD (Software Distributor)
• A.01.01.07 or later version of HP-UX Whitelisting (WhiteListInf)
To verify the signatures, run: /usr/sbin/swsign -v –s <depot_path>
For more information, see Software Distributor documentation at: http://www.hp.com/go/sd-docs
and Ignite-UX documentation at: http://www.hp.com/go/ignite-ux-docs.

4
About this document
This document discusses about the features of SoftReboot.
SoftReboot solution is a feature for HP-UX 11iv3 operating system environment.

Intended audience
This document is intended for owners, system administrators and customers seeking information
about the features of SoftReboot.

Typographic conventions
This document uses the following typographical conventions:

IMPORTANT: This alert provides essential information to explain a concept or to complete a task.

NOTE: A note contains additional information to emphasize or supplement important points of

the main text.

Intended audience 5
Executive summary
This white paper addresses only the following supported system configurations.
SoftReboot feature is supported for “nPar” systems only. The solution is not supported on HPVM
host/guest and vPar environments.
Table 1 Supported system configurations
Requirement Description

Operating SoftReboot feature is supported from HP-UX B.11.31.1109 fusion release onwards that is HP-UX 11iv3
system operating system environment.

Supported
platforms B.11.31.1109 B.11.31.1203 B.11.31.1303 B.11.31.1403

• ia64 HP • ia64 HP • ia64 HP • ia64 HP Superdome server SD32B/SD64B

Superdome Superdome Superdome
• HP Integrity Superdome 2 (SD2) 9300
server server server
processor series, HP Integrity Superdome
SD32B/SD64B SD32B/SD64B SD32B/SD64B
2 (SD2) 9500 processor series
• HP Integrity
• blade BL860c i2/i4, BL870c i2/i4, and
Superdome
BL890c i2/i4
2 (SD2)
9300
processor
series, HP
Integrity
Superdome
2 (SD2)
9500
processor
series

6 Executive summary
1 Technologies/features
SoftReboot feature reduces the operating system reboot time experienced during routine system
maintenance. SoftReboot achieves this downtime reduction by skipping the platform hardware
reset and booting the next kernel directly from the current operating system instance.
The time saved due to SoftReboot solution varies across platforms and different hardware
configurations of the same platform. Hence, the down time savings due to SoftReboot are not
quantifiable.

SoftReboot integrated with DRD

With SRB feature, DRD can further reduce downtime during reboot process. SRB version
B.11.31.1303 supports DRD. DRD version A.3.12 supports SRB. For details about DRD, see
Dynamic Root Disk A.3.12.* Administrator's Guide at www.hp.com/go/drd-docs.
For proper functioning of this feature, the SRB version should be B.11.31.1303 or above and DRD
version should be A.3.12 or above.

Product contents
The SoftReboot feature is implemented in two Dynamically Loadable Kernel Modules, two commands
and kernel enabler patches.

1 SoftRebootEnh Optional NCF bundle available in OE

2 SoftReboot enabler Kernel patches B.11.31.1303 PHKL_42332

nl

PHKL_42333
nl

PHKL_43752
nl

PHKL_43266(HPUX 11i v3 1303)

3 Other dependencies (needed only on PHKL_42336

B.11.31.1109)

4 SoftReboot enabler commands patches PHCO_42480

5 SW-DIST version >= B.11.31.1203 SD-UX product to support swinstall with special SoftReboot
flag

SoftReboot integrated with DRD 7

2 Installation and uninstallation
Installation
1203
To install the SoftRebootEnh bundle, perform the following steps:
1. Install the SoftRebootEnh bundle from B.11.31.1203 OE that is available electronically and
on media. SoftRebootEnh bundle is available B.11.31.1203 OE onwards.
2. Verify the supported platform
3. Run swlist to verify successful installation
swlist | grep SoftRebootEnh

1303
To install the SoftRebootEnh bundle, perform the following steps:
1. Install the SoftRebootEnh bundle from B.11.31.1303 OE that is available electronically and
on media. SoftRebootEnh bundle is available B.11.31.1303 OE onwards.
2. Verify the supported platform
3. USB and Graphics drivers must be disabled explicitly for the SoftReboot feature to function.
• To disable USB driver, do the following:
Install the Patch PHKL_43265, which disables the USB driver. To disable the USB driver,
run the following command:
kctune usb_disable_core=1
For more information, see the section HP Only in the Patch document.
• To disable Graphics, run the following commands:
kcmodule gvid_info=unused
kcmodule gvid_him_cons=unused
kcmodule gvid_core=unused
kcmodule gvid=unused

NOTE: System reboot is required for changes to take effect.

4. Run swlist to verify successful installation

swlist | grep SoftRebootEnh

1403
To install the SoftRebootEnh bundle from 1403 OE media, perform the following steps:
1. Install the SoftRebootEnh bundle from B.11.31.1403 OE.
2. Verify supported platform.

8 Installation and uninstallation

 3. USB and Graphics drivers must be disabled explicitly for the SoftReboot feature to function.
• To disable USB driver, do the following:
Install the Patch PHKL_43265, which disables the USB driver. To disable the USB driver,
run the following command:
kctune usb_disable_core=1
For more information, see the section HP Only in the Patch document.
• To disable Graphics, run the following commands:
kcmodule gvid_info=unused
kcmodule gvid_him_cons=unused
kcmodule gvid_core=unused
kcmodule gvid=unused

NOTE: System reboot is required for changes to take effect.

4. Run swlist to verify successful installation

swlist | grep SoftRebootEnh

NOTE: It is recommended to install patch PHKL_43845 to enable Kernel Crash Dump during
Softreboot.

Uninstallation
To uninstall SoftReboot solution, run the command:
# swremove -x autoreboot=true SoftRebootEnh

NOTE:
• Uninstallation of SoftReboot patches requires normal boot.
• SoftReboot cannot be used during its uninstallation.

Uninstallation 9
3 Configuration and usage
SoftReboot functionality requires both "rbloader" and "uxex" DLKMs to be loaded. Upon installation
of the SoftReboot product, these two DLKMs are automatically configured to be loaded. Reboot
and shutdown utilities have been enhanced for SoftReboot and provide a new option, "-S", to
initiate a SoftReboot instead of normal reboot.
SoftReboot can also be invoked as part of swinstall SD command through a new option -x
softreboot. Using this new option, one can specify swinstall to perform a SoftReboot after
installation of patches that require a reboot.
swinstall –x softreboot=true –x autoreboot=true –s <kernel patch> \*
Synopsis for reboot and shutdown with the installation of bundle is changed as follows:
reboot –S [-t time] [-m message]:
Specifying "-S" option results in SoftReboot. It skips firmware and hardware
reinitialization unlike normal reboot. The other options [-t time] and [-m
message] are optional arguments.
[-t time] Specify what time reboot will bring the system down, where argument
"time" can be "now" (indicating immediate shutdown) or a future time in one of
the two formats: +number and hour:min.

Refer reboot (1m) manpage for more details.

shutdown –S [-r] [-y] [grace]:
Specifying "-S" option results in SoftReboot. It works like "shutdown -r" except
that firmware and hardware reinitialization is skipped. As part of this, system
shutdown happens after which SoftReboot is performed.

The other options [-r] [-y] [grace] are optional arguments.

Refer shutdown(1m) manpage for more details.
Softreboot can be invoked with DRD activate command to reduce booting to clone disk. For more
information, see Dynamic Root Disk A.3.12.* Administrator's Guide.

10 Configuration and usage

4 Behavior and use case examples
When SoftReboot feature is enabled with reboot/shutdown/swinstall options, system reboots
skipping firmware reset and the next kernel is loaded directly from the current kernel instance. Due
to this, the bootloader stage is completely skipped. In the current release, the next kernel configured
for boot is automatically loaded.
With this, the next kernel boot options cannot be specified. If the kernel boot options are to be
provided, then normal reboot should be invoked without -S option.

Example 1 Applying general kernel patches

Application of kernel patches that contain defect fixes results in a reboot to the newly built kernel.
This reboot can be done through SoftReboot to save the downtime.
Apply the required bug fixes (kernel patches)
# swinstall -x softreboot=true -x autoreboot=true –s
<PHKL_xyz> \*

The system shall boot load to the new kernel through SoftReboot in lesser time.

Example 2 Applying tunable setting changes

While most HP-UX kernel tunables can be changed immediately, some require a reboot to take
effect. Those kernel tunables can be changed with kctune(1m) and their changes take effect when
done through SoftReboot.
Sequence as follows:
1. Change your favorite kernel tunable setting that needs a reboot
# kctune maxfiles=4096

2. Reboot the system to effect new changes

# reboot -S

OR

# shutdown -S

NOTE: mdep_reduce_rse_size tunable introduced in B.11.31.1403 release is an exception.

Any changes to this tunable does not take effect with Softreboot.

Example 3 Reducing downtime during reboot process

If a machine is installed with DRD that supports SoftReboot feature on a supported platform, run
the following command:
# /opt/drd/bin/drd activate -x softreboot=true
A new option -x softreboot=true is added to drd activate command. SRB will be
supported to reduce the booting time to clone disk when you use the command drd activate
–x softreboot=true. The drd activate -x softreboot=true option activates the
clone disk and boot to clone disk (where downtime is reduced).

11
5 Constraints
Hardware configuration changes
Primary boot path changes
If the boot path is changed using setboot to a different disk, the softreboot should not be invoked.
Instead normal reboot should be issued.

HyperThreading settings
If the hyper threading settings are changed using setboot -m ON/OFF then those settings do
not take effect across a softreboot. To effect the settings, normal reboot without "-S" option should
be done.

nPar hardware setting changes

If the nPar settings like ILM/CLM ratios, cell assignments and so on are changed using the
parmodify command, then those settings do not take effect across a softreboot. To activate these
nPar changes, perform a normal reboot (shutdown/reboot –R/-H).

Cell OLAD
If a floating cell is dynamically deleted using the parolrad command and then a softreboot is
performed, the new kernel OS instance shall not contain the deleted cell. Whereas, upon a normal
reboot, any floating cell deleted using parolrad is available in the next kernel boot. If the deleted
cell is to be made available, then that cell should be added back using "parolrad" or normal
reboot should be attempted instead of softreboot.

Interface card OL* (PCI OL*)

If any PCI card is dynamically deleted using the "olrad" command and then a softreboot is
performed, in the new kernel instance the PCI card shall remain powered OFF. Whereas, upon a
normal reboot, the deleted PCI card is available (powered ON) in the next booted kernel instance.
If the deleted PCI card is to be used in the next kernel boot, add the card explicitly using "olrad"
or perform a normal reboot without -S option.

Dynamic processor resiliency

A processor deactivated by DPR shall remain deactivated in the next boot done through softreboot,
but the processor is not removed until a normal reboot is performed.

Known issues with SoftReboot

• Softreboot kernel loading can fail, if the system has USB and Graphics I/O cards in place.

WARNING! Falling back to normal reboot.

• If icapmodify was run prior to softreboot, the next booted Kernel may not show the correct
number of processor cores. Hence, iCAP is not recommended to be used in combination with
softreboot.

12 Constraints
6 Troubleshooting
This chapter explains some of the problem scenarios that you might encounter while working with
SoftReboot.
Problem
On B.11.31.1403 release, if SoftReboot is used without the patch PHKL_43845 certain dumps
may fail during softreboot window with an error message indicating no dump space configured.
Compressed dumps may fail and fall back to uncompressed dump during softreboot.
Workaround
Install PHKL_43845.

13
7 Documentation feedback
HP is committed to providing documentation that meets your needs. To help us improve the
documentation, send any errors, suggestions, or comments to Documentation Feedback
(docsfeedback@hp.com). Include the document title and part number, version number, or the URL
when submitting your feedback.

14 Documentation feedback
A SoftReboot Software Depot List
# swlist -l product SoftRebootEnh
# Initializing...
# Contacting target "mdepkt5"...
#
# Target: mdepkt5:/
#
# SoftRebootEnh B.11.31.1403 HPUX Soft Reboot
SoftRebootEnh.SoftReboot B.11.31.1403 SoftReboot feature
# swlist -l fileset SoftRebootEnh
# Initializing...
# Contacting target "mdepkt5"...
#
# Target: mdepkt5:/
#
# SoftRebootEnh B.11.31.1403 HPUX Soft Reboot
# SoftRebootEnh.SoftReboot B.11.31.1403 SoftReboot feature
SoftRebootEnh.SoftReboot.SOFTREBOOT-CMD B.11.31.1403 Soft Reboot command files
SoftRebootEnh.SoftReboot.SOFTREBOOT-KRN B.11.31.1403 Soft Reboot kernel files

15
B Messages during SoftReboot
Diagnostics and Driver messages during SoftReboot
During a softreboot the user may notice warnings or errors from the diagnostics
and other I/O drivers. These messages are safe and do not affect the behavior of
the next kernel booted.

A typical set of messages from diagnostics driver is as follows:

The diagnostic logging facility has started receiving excessive errors from the I/O
subsystem. Until the cause of the excessive I/O logging is corrected, I/O error
entries will be lost.
If the diaglogd daemon is not active, use the Daemon Startup command
in stm to start it.
If the diaglogd daemon is active, use the logtool utility in stm.

A typical I/O driver status messages as follows:

0/0/9/1/0: Fibre Channel Driver Received Remove Request.
0/0/9/1/0: Fibre Channel Driver has been Successfully Removed.
0/0/9/1/1: Fibre Channel Driver Received Suspend Request.
0/0/9/1/1: Fibre Channel Driver has been Successfully Suspended.

16 Messages during SoftReboot