Joerg Schilling wrote:

>Cyril Plisko <cyril.plisko at gmail.com> wrote:
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>>It sounds like it is possible. However, I do not understand these things 
>>enough
>>to have a clear opinion. On SPARC, when I hit Stop-A I get back to "ok" prompt
>>and have an OBP working. However, not all of the facilities are available
>>at that point (AFAIR) until I reset-all it.
>>    
>>

Not only when Stop+A'ing a running system (bootet Solaris kernel), but 
the same behaviour also appears after a full, proper shutdown with

# init 0

or

# halt
(for example)

So it is more than just a catched exception.
A sparc system has to be "reset-all" (or "reset" on certain older OBP's) 
in order to be fully functioning again, after a kernel had been loaded 
before.

>
>I believe that the OF on Sparc knows which commands would be dangerous to the 
>booted program (Solaris) and forbid them.
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Yes and no, rather no.

Yes: It does give a warning on certain commands, i.e. "probe-scsi" or 
"probe-scsi-all".
I get the following (OpenBoot 4.16.4 / SB2000):

ok probe-scsi
This command may hang the system if a Stop-A or halt command has been 
executed. Please type reset-all or reset te system
before executing this command.
Do you wish to continue? (y/n)

So you have at least choice on thos catched commands.
However, some dangerous commands are not catched at all.
Just do a "probe-all" on a Blade 2000 and everything seems to be dead.
I then realized, that just vga was hanging, keyboard still worked.
(was a booted, running Sol10_03/05 system)
There were worse problems with some versions of Sol9_sparc where you 
would even get to any ok prompt, but where the system would be forced to 
dump and reboot when you hit Stop+A or halted / init 0 'ed the machine / 
bug was USB-framework related).

Then I halted another Blade 2000 with "init 0".
The same here (same as on a still running/fully booted box, 
interestingly) : Got a warning on "probe-scsi-all".
Got no warning on "probe-all".
This time not VGA was black, but I permanently got USB / kbd timeout errors.
Then the kernel paniced (Why is that beast still running at all, after a 
"halt"???) and reboot was forced.

Even different situation on VOF on prep, though:
#0) No Stop+A or friend found, did it exist on PowerPC ??
Probably not.
#1) No way to get back from a booted system to any ok promt.
Not even after doing a "init 0" or halt.


martin

>J?rg
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